The beginning of the end came for the world’s tallest slum on Tuesday as officials began evicting thousands of squatters from a haphazard community inside the half-built Caracas skyscraper known as the Tower of David.
Police in riot gear and soldiers with Kalashnikov assault rifles stood on side streets as dozens of residents boarded buses for their new government-provided apartments in the town of Cua, 37km south of Caracas.
Ernesto Villegas, the government minister overseeing Caracas’ redevelopment, told reporters the residents could not be allowed to stay indefinitely because the 45-story building in the heart of the capital is unsafe.
Photo: AFP
He said children have fallen to their deaths from the tower, which in some places is missing walls or windows.
The damp, foul-smelling concrete lobby attested to the lack of working plumbing.
Meant to be the crown jewel of a glittering downtown, the building was abandoned amid a 1990s banking crisis. It was later nicknamed the Tower of David, after its financier, David Brillembourg.
Villegas said the tower started its life as a symbol of failed capitalism, and later came to represent the power of community.
The squatters’ invasion was part of a larger appropriation of vacant buildings encouraged by late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
By 2007, the “invaders,” as they are called in Caracas, had claimed everything from the parking garages to the rooftop helipad. They rigged up electricity, opened stores and barbershops, and created a sophisticated internal management system.
On Tuesday, Maria Sevilla, manager of the 28th floor, looked wistfully at the sooty concrete skeleton, with its steep ledges and incomplete stories stippled with satellite dishes.
“What I’ll miss the most is the community we built here,” she said.
A former street vendor, Sevilla said the 50 neighbors on her floor had become like family to her and her teenage children.
For outsiders, the tower symbolized the height of anarchic dysfunction. The surreal-looking high-rise was widely believed to harbor criminals as well as working families, and it was sometimes raided by police looking for kidnapping victims. The US TV show Homeland depicted the building as a lawless place where thugs participate in international conspiracies and kill with impunity.
The building’s neighbors celebrated the eviction on Tuesday.
Retiree Antonio Farias looked on with glee, saying the slum had brought the constant threat of kidnapping, rape and robbery.
“It was so beautiful at first,” he said.
Residents complained that they did not want to move so far away. They worry about losing the million-dollar views, and their easy access to supermarkets, public transportation and, possibly, employment.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was