Contesting the American Impressions

I'd not seen this, but evidently Ruth Zavaleta was singled out by a WikiLeaked cable as having a relationship with Hugo Chávez, which provoked a staunch denial in last week's column for Excélsior:

I categorically deny any link "of regular contact" or sporadic contact with President Hugo Chávez or his representatives, nor would I have any reason to be in contact with him given that I don't share his ideas or activities: I believe in social democracy and not populism; I believe in the democratic system with its rules and institutions and in the construction of social pacts through agreements, I don't believe in violence as a means to an end.

After that denial, she writes:

WikiLeaks teaches us some lessons: not all of the information from the US embassy is correct and even when the information must be made public, the findings must be contrasted with verified information about who is saying it, why they are saying it, and when they are saying it. Which is to say, the basic principals of journalism, which, of course, I don't seek to teach to the professionals in the field and much less the national security institutions in our neighbor to the north.

Whatever the other embarrassments, I don't remember reading much from the cables that were later contradicted as flatly incorrect.

Also, Zavaleta is a darn good writer for a politician; I can't think of any other op-ed-producing pol whose 800 words a week aren't an awful slog.