I didn’t launch Cubillos.com because I needed a hobby. I did it because I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.
When you’ve spent as much time in newsrooms, with the military grunts, and city halls as I have, you start to recognize the signs of history circling back—this time with sharper teeth. And as I watched the current administration roll out executive orders dressed up like salvation, while real rights, real people, and real institutions were being stripped down to the studs, I knew it was time to start writing my own truth, in my own voice, on my own terms.
Not with filters.
Not with corporate gloss.
Not to chase clicks or appease algorithms.
Just me—unfiltered, unsponsored, and unapologetically seasoned by decades of doing the damn job.
I didn’t go to journalism school.
I fell into it by accident.
I started out writing obits at The Daily Californian. Then came a front-page story on the eve of the first Gulf War—and that’s when it hit. The ink. The calling. The purpose. From that moment on, journalism wasn’t a job. It was in my veins.
Later, at La Prensa San Diego, my editor Dan Muñoz Sr. read one of my early stories and said:
“You wrote this with blue glasses.”
“Try using the brown eyes you were born with.”
That moment rewired everything.
I began reporting from a place of purpose, not posture. I sat with Chicano Movement builders—Herman Baca, Reies Tijerina, José Ángel Gutiérrez, Lalo Guerrero—and learned how to cover a community that mainstream outlets overlooked. I had the honor of interviewing John Lewis and other Freedom Fighters—people who didn’t just talk about justice but lived it, marched it, bled for it.
I was a regular voice on a weekly radio show for the local PBS station—just me and two mainstream editors from the dailies, bringing real stories and uncomfortable truths to the mic. And I rattled cages. I rattled the establishment. I rattled the media. Because journalism isn’t about keeping anyone comfortable. It’s about keeping them honest.
One editor at a Scripps-Howard newspaper once told me,
“You know how to connect the dots.”
That’s stayed with me ever since.
So when I see history echoing again—in executive orders, tariffs, press crackdowns, and policy rollbacks—I don’t wait for permission to write. I just pick up the pen.
Because, unlike the pundits in studio lighting or the think tank towers, my observations come from the street. From the field. From conversations, contradictions, and communities that still don’t make it onto cable news.
This voice isn’t polished. It’s real. And it’s earned.
Cubillos.com is where I say what needs saying.
It’s where I connect the dots between past and present, call out the quiet wrongs, and amplify the truths that still need witnesses.
This is why I write.
Because I’ve seen this show before.
And this time, I brought my notebook.