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The High Points

• Maduro opened a “maternity center” inside Venezuela’s notorious torture prison.

• A political prisoner died hours after the staged inauguration.

• Critics call the move propaganda masking brutal repression.

Only a socialist dictatorship could turn a torture chamber into a PR stunt and pretend it’s compassion. Maduro literally opened a maternity center inside the Helicoide—the same building where dissidents report electric shocks, beatings, starvation, and isolation—and we’re supposed to applaud? Hours later, one of those political prisoners conveniently died. Total coincidence, right? Venezuela has been a warning for years, and this episode proves it: socialism doesn’t just destroy economies, it destroys human beings while putting a friendly label on the killing machine.

Maduro naming the center after his wife—who already fancies herself above a First Lady—tells you exactly what this really is: regime worship masquerading as humanitarian outreach. While infants are used for propaganda, adults are tortured one floor down. And the regime dares to accuse its targets of “terrorism.” In a sane world, the Helicoide would be shut down—not repainted and rebranded like a communist baby shower.

From Breitbart:

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.

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