Jesús Armas spent 14 months inside El Helicoide, the concrete spiral that sits atop a central Caracas rock. He remembers living without sunlight and under unending artificial light. Held for weeks in a small, windowless cell with no outside contact, Armas says the perpetual illumination heightened his anxiety and paranoia.
As Venezuela moves through a tentative political transition, debates have turned to how to dismantle the repressive institutions that imprisoned thousands. At the center of that debate is El Helicoide — an unfinished, striking structure that began in the 1950s as an ambitious shopping mall and was later taken over by the country’s intelligence apparatus. Its sweeping ramps and terraced levels built around the rock give it a spaceship-like silhouette; planners had intended the ramps to serve customers driving through a modern, drive-in style mall.
The mall project stalled after the fall of the dictatorship that had backed it in 1958, leaving a bare concrete shell without plumbing, electrical systems or finishes. The building briefly sheltered flood victims before the state handed it to DISIP, the intelligence police, in the 1980s. Cultural historian Celeste Olalquiaga, who has written about the site, says the conversion into a detention center began El Helicoide’s lasting association with imprisonment and abuse.
Under the Nicolás Maduro government, accounts of rights violations inside El Helicoide multiplied. Former detainees describe isolation, harsh interrogation techniques and physical abuse. Human rights activist Javier Tarazona recalls being locked in a roughly 16-foot cell nicknamed “the little tiger” with two others and only allowed out for questioning. He says agents attempted to asphyxiate him with a bag and forced him to take scopolamine in order to produce recordings allegedly useful against opposition figures.
Following an amnesty law that freed hundreds of political prisoners, the interim government led by Delcy Rodríguez proposed transforming El Helicoide into a sports complex for police and local residents. The communications ministry released edited drone footage and said refurbishment work had begun after consultation with community members.
That plan has met fierce resistance from opposition leaders and former inmates, who see a conversion to recreational use as an effort to erase or whitewash the building’s violent past. Armas and others argue the site should instead become a museum or memorial so the abuses and political repression it housed are not forgotten. Tarazona has suggested a preservation model similar to Robben Island in South Africa, to safeguard collective memory and help prevent future abuses.
Historians and activists are pressing for a compromise: keep the detention cells and interrogation areas as a memory site while adapting unused portions of the vast structure to meet community needs. Currently, only the two lower levels function as an active prison; the building’s scale could allow multiple, separate uses. Olalquiaga has said the cells should be preserved as a place of remembrance but that dedicating the entire complex solely to memorialization would neglect the needs of surrounding neighborhoods that require services and facilities.
The dispute over El Helicoide reflects broader dilemmas facing Venezuela as it seeks to move forward: how to confront past human rights abuses, secure accountability, and rebuild public institutions that serve citizens rather than silence them. What happens to this iconic but fraught building will be an early test of whether the country can balance commemoration and justice with practical community needs while forging a new democratic path.