The Long Road to Revolution: A Profile of ETA’s Arturo Cubillas Fontán

The Long Road to Revolution: A Profile of ETA’s Arturo Cubillas Fontán

Arturo Cubillas Fontán adds a new dimension to the Basque terrorist organization Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA—Basque Homeland and Liberty). The ETA has historically been known as a grouping of militants fighting for the independence of the Basque Country from the Spanish crown and the perceived threat to the Basque people and culture posed by Madrid. However, Cubillas Fontán has veered from this tradition to base himself in Venezuela and espouse an internationalist cause. He is accused of organizing ETA-Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC—Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) encounters used by the Basque separatist group to test mortar grenades and receive training in exchange for courses on the use of explosives.  

The biggest waves of ETA operatives arrived in Venezuela from France and Algeria in the 1980s and from Panama in 1990. While other Latin American cities, notably Mexico City, have absorbed a number of ETA members, Spanish concerns focus largely on those in Venezuela. “It’s not the biggest ETA colony, but it is the most important one in qualitative terms,” said Óscar Elía, an ETA expert with the Madrid-based Strategic Studies Group. “Venezuela is where they enjoy the most liberty.” 

The shadowy underworld of Basque exiles in Caracas is coming under sharp scrutiny after recent arrests in Europe and an indictment from one of Spain’s top judges asserting that Venezuelan intelligence officials were involved in training Basque separatists and Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela (New York Times, March 13, 2010). This past March, the Spanish judge Eloy Velasco issued a capture order against the 46-year old exile Cubillas Fontán, who has been working for the Venezuelan government since 2005. He is accused of acting as ETA’s main agent in Venezuela since 1999 and of arranging at least three meetings between ETA and Colombia’s FARC. The first of these encounters, held between July and August 2003 at a FARC camp in Venezuela, allowed four ETA members to test explosive equipment and receive military training in exchange for courses on the fabrication and use of ETA’s Jotake-Handia mortar grenades. Intelligence sources report that Cubillas also arranged an additional 20-day training course in Venezuela’s Apure State in 2007, in which 13 FARC members and seven Venezuelans from the Bolivarian Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Bolivarianas de Liberación-FBL) were trained on C4 explosives and the use of mobile phones as detonation devices. As a result of these meetings, FARC is believed to have asked the Basque group for information on how to target Colombian figures in Spain, including former President Andrés Pastrana Arango, current Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez and current presidential candidates Antanas Mockus, Francisco Santos and Noemí Sanín.  

Cubillas joined ETA’s Oker commando in 1984. This group set the oil firm Koipe’s installations near San Sebastián on fire in 1985 and was involved in more than 20 attacks with explosives and shotguns against French businesses and vehicles. Oker was held responsible for the murder of three people, including a Frenchman and a policeman. Cubillas Fontán’s participation in Oker was short. He escaped to France after the group was dismantled in October 1985 and was quickly arrested and deported to Algeria in 1987. He entered Venezuela as deportee two years later, along with eleven ETA associates, under an informal agreement reached between Venezuela and Spain. Cubillas set himself up in Caracas as a restaurant owner, which was called Oker’s after his former ETA unit. 

A year after his arrival in Venezuela, Cubillas married a local journalist of Basque origin, Goizeder Odriozola Lataillade, who herself has close ties to the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, having served as the president’s personal office aide. When Cubillas gave up his restaurant, he took a job working for the Chávez government as an administrative assistant in the Agriculture Ministry. In 2005, he was appointed the Ministry’s chief security officer. Within two years, Cubillas was organizing training courses in the use of explosives for FARC guerrillas. The ETA provided the left-wing Colombian revolutionaries with mobile telephone-activated explosive devices as recently as 2008 (El Correo, March 1, 2010).  

Judge Velasco’s indictment against Cubillas Fontán is based on a two-year investigation that gathered evidence based on: 

• Documents seized from ETA detailing the Basque group’s attempts to test mortar grenades at FARC camps since 1993
• Testimony of FARC rebels captured with possession of equipment similar to that used by ETA
• Computer files seized from Luis Edgar Devia Silva, better know by his nom de guerre Raul Reyes, a FARC leader and spokesman who was killed in 2008 during a Colombian military operation in Ecuadorian territory (El Tiempo [Bogota], March 1, 2008). 

Reyes’ files indicated that FARC rebels considered Cubillas Fontán their main ETA contact in Venezuela and that he arranged meetings between both groups alongside FARC’s Front 33 Commander Ruben Zamora. These files also show that Cubillas Fontán had communications with FARC’s Rodrigo Granda with the objective of arranging a meeting between the ETA and Raul Reyes, which was then cancelled last minute following the 2004 arrest of key ETA members in France (Exclusive Analysis [London], May 2010). Venezuela’s former Interior Minister Jesse Chacón refused to extradite Cubillas to Spain in 2006, alleging that as a Venezuelan citizen he would have to be tried in a court of that country. The matter was subsequently dropped. 

Cubillas has managed to keep the Spanish police as well as the judicial authorities at arm’s length, remaining sheltered under the protective arm of Chávez. “We are stumbling around in the dark,” said one member of Spain’s anti-terrorism brigade charged with responsibility for overseas activities. “We do what we can, we have some information about Cubillas and others, but we know a lot less than we should” (El País, March 21, 2010). As tensions between Colombia and Venezuela have been ratcheting up in recent weeks over Bogota’s accusations that the Chávez government is knowingly providing shelter to Colombian Marxist rebels on its territory, Chávez’s ties with ETA members like Arturo Cubillas Fontán may come under further scrutiny in tandem from both Spanish and Colombian authorities keen to tackle the two groups, which they claim share a Leftist ideological kinship.