Squatting Tall

Torre Confinanza was never meant to be lived in. In the early 1990s, it was going to be a bank. One of the tallest office blocks in Latin America, the bank that owned it went bust in 1994, and the semi-completed building passed into state hands.

There it languished for more than a decade, gradually deteriorating and becoming a haven for drug-addicts and prostitution.

But today the building is again abuzz with activity and construction. Three years ago, hundreds of families who could not find decent homes elsewhere in the capital descended on the derelict building and started setting up their houses.

Little by little, they have built small, brick homes on more than half the building's floors. Isabel's house is inside the multi-storey car park.-Venezuelan squatters bank on the future in office tower