Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro over the weekend announced the inauguration of a maternal and child health center at the Helicoide (“the Helix”), Venezuela’s largest and most infamous torture center.
Maduro’s announcement on Friday came hours before one of Maduro’s political prisoners, former Nueva Esparta governor Alfredo Díaz, died of a heart attack while unjustly imprisoned at the Helicoide.
The maternal and child care center, which the Maduro regime said will provide assistance to female Bolivarian National Police (PNB) officials and their families, was given the full name “Superintendent Cilia Flores de Maduro Maternal and Child Health Center,” in reference to the dictator’s wife, Cilia Flores, who holds the made-up title of “First Combatant” of the Bolivarian revolution, a designation that purportedly elevates her above First Lady status. According to the pro-regime newspaper Diario Vea, the name was proposed by female Bolivarian police officers.
“Perfect Friday, and today, the director of the Bolivarian National Police, General Rubén Santiago, was at the Helicoide. We have the images because we proceeded to deliver the police maternity and children’s hospital in that beloved area of Caracas, the Helicoide,” Maduro said during a Friday event in Caracas while wearing a Bolivarian Police uniform.
According to the Venezuelan Justice Ministry, the “Cilia Flores” maternal and child care center was inaugurated on Friday alongside the reopening of a separate medical center for police officers at the Helicoide.
“In addition to general medicine, the center offers specialties such as cardiovascular surgery, traumatology, dentistry, physical therapy, pediatric neurosurgery, operating rooms for childbirth and general surgery, and a neonatal ward, among others. This constitutes a wide range of medical services to care for the health of PNB officials and their families,” the Ministry explained on social media alongside a video of the two facilities.
Both medical centers operate in the infrastructure of the Helicoide, a structure in Caracas originally conceived in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez that, had it been finished, would have become the world’s first luxury drive-through mall.
Over time, the Venezuelan socialist regime turned the unfinished Helicoide into its largest and most infamous torture center, unjustly detaining and torturing political prisoners within its cells since the late 2000s. Former political prisoners of the Maduro regime have repeatedly denounced throughout the years the torture and other inhumane conditions they endured during their time at the Helicoide.
On Saturday, hours after Maduro’s announcement, Venezuelan politician Alfredo Díaz, who was unjustly detained at the Helicoide, died of a heart attack at the age of 56. The Maduro regime unjustly detained Díaz, who served as governor of Nueva Esparta state from 2017 to 2021, in November 2024 as he tried to flee the country. According to Alfredo Romero, head of the non-government Organization Foro Penal, the Maduro regime only allowed one visit from Díaz’s daughter throughout the year he remained unjustly detained.
At the time of his detention, Díaz’s wife Leynys Malavé reportedly said that Díaz had been allegedly detained for criticizing the Maduro regime for the recurring power outages that plague Nueva Esparta. Eventually, the Maduro regime charged Díaz with “incitement to hatred” and “terrorism” for questioning Maduro’s “victory” in the July 28, 2024, sham presidential election.
“I demand an answer about what happened to my husband. Did they kill him?” Malavé wrote on Instagram on Saturday.
The Maduro regime’s Penitentiary Services Ministry reportedly claimed in a statement over the weekend that Díaz “was being prosecuted, with full guarantees of his rights, in accordance with the legal system and with respect for human rights and his legal defense.”
The Ministry further claimed that on the morning of Saturday, December 6, Díaz showed symptoms “consistent with a myocardial infarction” and was transferred to a hospital in Caracas where he “sadly died minutes later” despite attempts to stabilize him. The Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional reported that Venezuelan opposition members had been requesting medical attention for Díaz, which the Maduro regime denied.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs denounced Díaz’s arbitrary detention at the Helicoide as “yet another reminder of the vile nature of the criminal Maduro regime” on social media.
In addition to the new medical centers and torture facilities, the Maduro regime bizarrely commissioned a 1,000-person-capacity basketball stadium on the upper area of the Helicoide in 2024. According to information from Venezuelan non-government organizations, the stadium serves as the venue for Spartans DC, a local team linked to top members of Maduro’s repressive apparatus.
Maduro, going against Christian traditions, has single-handedly changed the “start” of Christmas in Venezuela as he sees fit almost every year since 2013. To mark the start of the 2025 “Christmas season” on October 1, the Venezuelan regime held a fireworks show launched from the infamous Helicoide torture center on that day, and had the entire structure lit up throughout the night.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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