CARACAS — Jesús Armas spent 14 months inside El Helicoide, the towering complex at the center of Caracas that became synonymous with detention and abuse. What he remembers most is the absence of natural light and the relentless glare of artificial lamps.
Armas told a crowd outside the building that he was often confined for weeks in a small, windowless cell with no contact with the outside world and that the lights were never switched off, a condition he says intensified anxiety and paranoia.
As Venezuela tentatively moves toward a political opening, officials are debating how to repurpose parts of the repressive machinery that imprisoned thousands of dissidents. El Helicoide sits at the center of that discussion. Originally designed as an ambitious shopping center, it was later turned into a detention site where generations of critics say prisoners were tortured and mistreated.
Acting president Delcy Rodríguez has proposed transforming the site into a sports complex for police and neighborhood residents. The communications ministry released edited drone footage and said work had begun after consultations with local communities. An amnesty law Rodríguez announced in late January has led to the release of hundreds of political detainees and cleared some cells at El Helicoide.
But opposition figures, former inmates and human rights advocates warn against erasing the building’s recent past. They argue parts of El Helicoide should be preserved as a place of remembrance so the abuses that occurred there are neither forgotten nor repeated. Armas and others say the complex should be turned into a museum or memorial to document what happened within its walls.
The building’s origins are strikingly different from its grim reputation. Planned in the 1950s as a futuristic mall for a wealthy, oil-rich Venezuela, the structure spirals seven levels around a central rock, with broad ramps intended so drivers could park directly in front of shops — an early example of a drive-in shopping center. The project stalled after the 1958 fall of the dictatorship that had backed it; by 1960 construction stopped with ramps largely finished but interior work, plumbing and electrical systems incomplete.
The unfinished complex was briefly used to shelter flood victims before the government handed it over in the 1980s to DISIP, the national intelligence agency. That transfer marked the beginning of its conversion into a detention and interrogation center, according to cultural historian Celeste Olalquiaga.
Under the presidency of Nicolás Maduro, former inmates and rights groups say mistreatment intensified. Javier Tarazona, another person detained there, described months in a cramped 16-foot-wide cell known as ‘the little tiger,’ used mostly for interrogations. He says interrogators attempted to asphyxiate him with a bag and forced him to take scopolamine, a drug that can alter consciousness and be used to obtain confessions.
Human rights organizations and U.N. reports have documented patterns of torture and abuse in facilities like El Helicoide, and for many survivors the building itself is a symbol of state repression.
Those advocating for a memorial point to international examples such as Robben Island, where the former prison has been turned into a site of education and remembrance, as models of how places of captivity can be repurposed to teach future generations. Tarazona and others stress the need to build collective memory and guarantees of non-repetition.
Olalquiaga says El Helicoide’s scale and complexity allow for multiple uses. Only the two lowest levels currently operate as a prison, she notes, and preserving those cells as a memorial could coexist with new community facilities. “The prison cells must be left as a memory place,” she has argued, while also recognizing that dedicating the entire structure to a museum could be a disservice to neighboring communities that lack services and open space.
The debate captures broader tensions in a country balancing demands for truth and accountability with urgent local needs. For survivors, converting the building into recreational amenities risks erasing the suffering that occurred there. For nearby residents and some officials, repurposing El Helicoide could provide much-needed facilities and open space in a densely populated area.
With prisoners being released and political space widening, the ultimate fate of El Helicoide remains undecided. Whether it becomes a sports complex, a museum, a mixed-use development or a combination of those options will shape how Venezuelans remember — or move on from — one of the country’s most visible symbols of repression.