Psycho Cartoonist Storms Miami Herald building

MIAMI · Co-workers and friends puzzled over what prompted cartoonist José Varela to bring a knife and what appeared to be a machine gun to the El Nuevo Herald newsroom Friday, holing himself up for more than three hours before surrendering to police. Varela, 50, worked on a freelance basis for the Spanish-language paper, which is a sister paper to The Miami Herald. Police said Varela used to be a full-time employee at El Nuevo Herald.

Police said Varela arrived at the building around 11 a.m. wearing a black polo shirt with the letters "FBI" written on the back. He strode past a security checkpoint with what police later said resembled a MAC-11 submachine gun with a laser scope and 30 rounds of ammunition. Authorities determined after his arrest that the gun was made of plastic. It wasn't clear how he got through the checkpoint with the gun or whether he concealed it. Varela ran his coded employee card past a turnstile at the main entrance on the ground floor and continued unimpeded to the sixth floor. Once there, he brandished the gun, started to throw things on the floor, and said, "Someone has to pay for what's happening," recounted El Nuevo Herald reporter Alejandra Chaparro on the paper's Web site. The online story quoted Varela as saying he came "to unmask the true conflicts" at the paper. Varela did not elaborate.

He then took over the office of Humberto Castelló, El Nuevo Herald's top editor. Castelló was on vacation, but arrived at the building and talked to police. In a story posted on El Nuevo Herald's Web site, Varela was quoted as saying, "Today they're going to see it as violence. But somebody has to pay and that is going to be Castelló." At some point, security evacuated the majority of employees from the building.Tomás García Fusté, who has a show on the Telemiami cable network where Varela worked occasionally as a commentator, said Varela called him to say he was taking over the newspaper. Fusté thought he was joking.

Varela, who has addresses listed in Miami and Jupiter, surrendered at about 2:40 p.m. after talking to a hostage negotiator. "He kept repeating he wanted the truth to be told about the Herald and the conflict of interest editors there have," said Joe Garcia, a board member of The Cuban American National Foundation, who received two calls from Varela during the incident. Garcia said he has known Varela for years and does not consider him a violent man.

Some Herald employees told police Varela felt censored because the paper did not run some of his cartoons. In a mini-biography he supplied to El Nuevo Herald, he described growing up in Cuba, where he spent his school days drawing caricatures of his teachers, and leaving on a boat from Mariel.

Commentary: Another story in the local rag says that Varela had lost his home in foreclosure and his wife had filed for divorce after The Miami Herald fired him as a salaried cartoonist and used him as a freelance stringer. Apparently Varela had several jobs for various local media and yet they were paying him so little that he was in a deep financial hole.

Meanwhile, the corrupt politicians in Miami regularly steal millions of dollars without any trouble.