Lede Burial 101: NYT fumbles the Cubillas Fontán-INTI Link
I'm really glad the New York Times is devoting some real resources to this ETA-Venezuela story: chavismo's willingness to entwine itself with every weirdo fringe group out there, no matter how violent, never ceases to fascinate. But the piece they ran about it today was a disappointment. It never really got around to answering the one question that matters in this whole saga: is the head of ETA's cell in Venezuela drawing a paycheck from the Venezuelan government?
I appreciate that writing about a fundamentally secret organization is fundamentally hard. But the truth is out there, and there's reason to believe Cubillas Fontán's work status isn't such a terrifically well-kept secret after all. For starters Maye Primera, of Tal Cual and Spain's El País, says she confirmed it with two of Cubillas's co-workers at the National Lands Institute (INTI). Not to mention the fact that if you pick up a phone, call INTI and ask for el Sr. Cubillas Fontán, switchboard puts you through to the Security Department.
Now, if Cubillas really is still working for INTI, then the Venezuelan government isn't obliquely "sponsoring" terrorists; it's employing them outright.
I don't understand how that's anything other than a huge story. We're talking zero degrees of separation: the Chávez government hired the leader of a terrorist cell. To do a security job, involving guns. In remote rural areas.
And this turns up, obliquely, in the eighth graf in their story!
Somebody has got to exhume that lede.
Juan Cristobal
Francisco Toro
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Couldn't agree more there FT
In fact, I have another question: how come no one's asking why Cubillas has not been suspended from his position, arrested, and put at the orders of Eloy Velasco? How come the wife has not been called for questioning? Mind you, WTF is the Chavez regime doing, apart from confirming yet again that it protects criminals, to collaborate with the capture of a terrorist involved in the assassination of three people?
Cubilla's status
The official excuse is that Cubillas is a legal resident of Venezuela thanks to a treaty signed by either CAP or Caldera in the 90's, so he should be allowed to work wherever he wants.
Well, the obvious course of action here is to dig up that treaty and check what exactly is Cubilla's legal status. Is he allowed to work near weapons? Is he allowed to have free contact with anyone he wants, specially in Spain?
I seriously doubt that exiled terrorists have many rights, but opinions are useless here. But for objectivity's sake, you need check the actual treaty before you can start making accusations.
Read Maye Primera's story...
Maye interviewed Enrique Tejera París, who was foreign minister when Cubillas was allowed to immigrate.
Tejera says nothing was signed - the agreement to let the ETArras in was purely verbal between him and the Spanish government. It was way too hot to put on paper in the 1980s.
The issue isn't about the agreement then. The issue is that, unlike many of the other Etarras who came in 1989, Cubillas apparently never demobilized. Never left ETA. Keeps working for them.
Giving former terrorists a government job is one thing. But giving current, on-going terrorists a government job is something else altogether!!!
Check link
Quico, the link to Maye's interview is actually a link to some sort of Japenese Cafe... probably a happier sunday reading than the one related to Etarras in Venezuela, but I guess that was not your intent :)
Nestor
Ooops...
My discussion on Cubillas Fontán got mixed up with my other discussion on where to get good coffee in Japan! (Fixed now!)
OK, that was f**king retarded
Quico: "Tejera says nothing was signed - the agreement to let the ETArras in was purely verbal between him and the Spanish government. It was way too hot to put on paper in the 1980s.[...] The issue isn't about the agreement then. The issue is that, unlike many of the other Etarras who came in 1989, Cubillas apparently never demobilized. Never left ETA. Keeps working for them."
How stupid was the Spanish government not to put some kind of safeguards into the whole deal? What the f**k where they thinking?
Of course, you're right, the problem isn't what he used to do before he came to Venezuela, but what he does NOW. But by sending him and the others to Venezuela without any strings attached, all the Spanish government did was to give them a safe base of operations to coordinate their attacks. Of course they would keep working for ETA, why the hell would they stop? They should have at least reached some kind of agreement that the local police would tell the Spanish government if he ever does anything illegal. But apparently they didn't even do that.
Felipe González isn't a kamikaze
At the time, Felipe González was trying to launch peace negotiations with ETA. Announcing the agreement with CAP was far too politically risky: the PP would've gone to town on him, derailing the entire process. Of course, the process went nowhere anyway. But you asked what they were thinking, and that's what it was.
Milicias rurales
I know most of the guys hold the rifle by the wrong end, they would initially shoot themselves on their foot, literally, and they probably don't know how to read a map but as I wrote in a post some days ago: learning to destroy is way easier than learning to build. The
The rural militias could become part of our Basij...and guys like this Basque may be used to that end: teach how to do subversive work, set up a bomb and the like
Welcome to the club
This reminds me of what I and many others in the States say about the NYT. My first exposure to the NYT was a daily subscription to it in a 9th grade class, a reading habit I kept for years. I do not currently hold the NYT in the esteem I did when I was younger. Its bias shows not only in its editorial page, but in how it covers the news. The imperious attitude of the NYT towards the news also translates into money. NYT heir Arthur Sulzberger's income "more than doubled to $6 million in 2009" when reporters were taking a pay cut.
IMHO, in recent years the NYT has been more credible about Venezuela than it has been about some domestic US issues. Simon Romero has written some good articles on Venezuela. This was not one of his better articles: agree with you that he should have put more emphasis on ETA-Chavista links.
Boludo Tejano