CARACAS, VENEZUELA El Helicoide: From Mall to Prison

Built in the late 1950s in Caracas, Venezuela, El Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya, a state-of-the-art drive-in mall, was never completed. Featuring a two-and-a-half-mile double helix of ascending and descending vehicular ramps, this futuristic structure of reinforced concrete was to become a flagship of Venezuela’s entry to modernity and attracted worldwide attention. Initially budgeted at the modern equivalent of $10 million, El Helicoide was also an innovative private initiative — most of its 300 commercial spaces were pre-sold to help finance the construction. After the military dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952-1958) collapsed, the project’s bank loans became politically entangled and construction was interrupted, coming to a full stop in 1961. Despite numerous stop-start projects to put the vast complex to public use, the structure has only known two uses: as a refuge for landslide victims in 1979, which quickly extended to a 10,000-person, three-year occupation, and as a headquarters for the Venezuelan intelligence police since 1985. While large parts of the structure remain in abandon, El Helicoide continues to be used as a police headquarters and notorious prison for political detainees to this day, representing the dark side of modernity in Latin America.