Ana Margarita Martínez is a Cuban-American public relations consultant born in Cuba in 1960, who 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 in the Cuban Armed Forces (FAR), defected in March 1992 after swimming nine kilometers to the Guantanamo naval base, where he presented himself as a defector Cuban officer. He quickly settled in Miami and was recruited by the organization Hermanos al Rescate. Roque's arrival generated significant media coverage due to the implications of his defection. A week after arriving, he met Ana Margarita, who had two children from a previous marriage, and they married three years later, on April 1, 1995, in what was referred to as "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 tried 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 pointed out on more than one occasion that it was he who requested his return to Cuba because he missed his family and home.
A las 3 de la madrugada del 23 de febrero de 1996 Roque abandonó la casa y la ciudad de forma clandestina viajando en autobús a Fort Lauderdale de donde tomó un avión hasta Tampa para luego llegar a la Habana vía Cancún. Horas después, el 24 de febrero de 1996, Cuba procedía al derribo de dos avionetas de la organización Hermanos al Rescate, en las que perdían la vida sus cuatro pilotos. En este vuelo debió haber viajado Roque, como ha asegurado Margarita, pero no lo hizo, alegando que él sabía lo que ocurriría. Al llegar a Cuba Roque fue recibido como héroe y apareció a las pocas horas del derribo de las avionetas en un directo de la CNN Internacional, entrevistado en la capital cubana por la periodista Lucia Newman. Fue entonces cuando Margarita y el mundo entero se enteraron de la verdadera condición del expía.
Subsequently, Ramírez annulled his marriage and sued the Cuban government in a Miami court for "emotional distress." In 2001, he won a judgment awarding him more than 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 funds in frozen accounts that the Cuban government has in U.S. banks since 1960. Additionally, he was allowed to keep three Cuban planes that had arrived in U.S. territory from Cuba as compensation.
Ana Margarita Martínez has once again made headlines following the release of the film La Red Avispa (Wasp Network) on Netflix in June 2020. The film premiered in the Official Selection of the 76th Venice Film Festival in 2019, directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas and featuring 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 as it is based on a mediocre book, full of inaccuracies and fabrications, written by a well-known supporter of Fidel Castro." She has also commented on the Cuban actress Ana de Armas, who plays her character: "I would tell Ana de Armas that she should have had more shame as a Cuban and that, as a Cuban, she should have wanted to represent the truth and not have allowed herself to be used to portray an infamy against the Cuban-American community," Martínez said in exclusive statements to Univisión 23 in Miami
