Ana Margarita Martínez

Ana Margarita Martínez is a Cuban-American public relations consultant born in Cuba in 1960. She emigrated to Florida at the age of six and is known for being the ex-wife of the Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque.

Roque, a pilot of the Cuban Armed Forces (FAR), defected in March 1992 after swimming nine kilometers to the Guantánamo naval base, where he presented himself as a Cuban defector. He quickly settled in Miami and was recruited by the organization Hermanos al Rescate. Roque's arrival garnered significant media attention due to the implications of his defection. A week after his arrival, he met Ana Margarita, who had two children from a previous marriage, and they got married three years later on April 1, 1995, in what was dubbed "the wedding of the decade."

Pablo Roque was a member of the AVISPA espionage network, whose mission was to infiltrate the community and penetrate anti-Castro groups, federal institutions, and military bases in the southern United States. Ana Margarita has acknowledged that during their years of marriage, Roque attempted to recruit her, but it was impossible due to her strong convictions.

For his part, Roque, who had used his marriage to Martínez as a cover, has stated on more than one occasion that it was he who requested his return to Cuba because he missed his family and his home.

At 3 a.m. on February 23, 1996, Roque left his home and the city clandestinely, taking a bus to Fort Lauderdale, from where he boarded a flight to Tampa before finally arriving in Havana via Cancun. Hours later, on February 24, 1996, Cuba proceeded to shoot down two aircraft from the organization Brothers to the Rescue, claiming the lives of four pilots. Roque was supposed to be on that flight, as Margarita has claimed, but he did not go, citing that he knew what would happen. Upon his arrival in Cuba, Roque was welcomed as a hero and appeared a few hours after the shootdown on a live segment with CNN International, interviewed in the Cuban capital by journalist Lucia Newman. It was then that Margarita and the entire world learned about the true status of the former spy.

Subsequently, Ramírez annulled his marriage and sued the Government of Cuba in a Miami court for "emotional distress." In 2001, he received a ruling awarding him over 27 million dollars for personal damages and an additional 20 million dollars in punitive damages. Although he did not receive the full amount, in 2005, former President George Bush ordered that 198,000 dollars be paid to him from the funds frozen in U.S. banks since 1960 that belonged to the Cuban government. He was also allowed to keep three Cuban planes that arrived in the United States from Cuba as part of the settlement.

Ana Margarita Martínez has made headlines again following the release of the film Wasp Network on Netflix in June 2020. The film, which premiered in the Official Selection of the 76th Venice Film Festival in 2019, is directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas and features performances by Penélope Cruz, Ana de Armas, Wagner Moura, Gael García Bernal, Edgar Ramírez, and Leonardo Sbaraglia.

Regarding the film, Margarita has stated that she considers La Red Avisa to be a "resounding failure because it is based on a mediocre book, full of inaccuracies and fabrications, written by a well-known supporter of Fidel Castro." She also commented on the Cuban actress Ana de Armas, who portrays her character: "I would tell Ana de Armas that she should have felt more shame as a Cuban and that, as a Cuban, she should have wanted to represent the truth rather than lend herself to portraying an infamy against the Cuban-American community," Martínez said in exclusive remarks to Univisión 23 in Miami.