How a Mall Became a Prison and a Symbol of Venezuelas Collapse
BY CELESTE OLALQUIAGA AND LISA BLACKMORE | NOVEMBER 10, 2017
The tragic history of Venezuela’s El Helicoide speaks to the promise and privation of a nation in decline.
There is perhaps no more poignant physical symbol of Venezuela’s decline – its authoritarian turn, flattened opposition, and imminent risk of default and economic catastrophe – than the huge concrete spiral known as El Helicoide, in central Caracas.
Once planned as South America’s most spectacular monument to modern capitalism, El Helicoide is today Venezuela’s most notorious torture center: Since protests rocked Caracas in 2014 and earlier this year, over three hundred students, activists and politicians have been crammed into its cells. Inside, Venezuelan police forces, in particular the SEBIN (intelligence and counter-intelligence) and the PNB (national police), reign supreme.
But the hidden history of El Helicoide lies not only in the tragic present of its prisoners, but in the six decades of social oblivion and urban misery in which thousands of families have lived since the building’s construction began.
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http://americasquarterly.org/content/venezuelas-downward-spiral