Ana Margarita Martínez

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 naval base in Guantánamo, 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 received 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 married three years later on April 1, 1995, in what was dubbed "the wedding of the decade."

Pablo Roque was a member of the espionage network AVISPA, 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 her 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.

At 3 a.m. on February 23, 1996, Roque left his home and the city secretly, traveling by bus to Fort Lauderdale, from where he took a flight to Tampa, and then arrived in Havana via Cancun. Hours later, on February 24, 1996, Cuba shot down two planes belonging to the organization Hermanos al Rescate, resulting in the deaths of their four pilots. Roque was supposed to be on that flight, as Margarita has confirmed, but he did not go, claiming that he knew what would happen. Upon arriving in Cuba, Roque was welcomed as a hero and appeared shortly after the downing of the planes in a live segment on CNN International, interviewed in the Cuban capital by journalist Lucia Newman. It was then that Margarita and the entire world learned of the true condition of the former spy.

Subsequently, Ramírez annulled his marriage and sued the Cuban government in a Miami court for "emotional distress." In 2001, he won a judgment granting him over 27 million dollars in 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 held in frozen accounts that the Cuban government has in U.S. banks since 1960. Additionally, he was allowed to keep three Cuban planes that arrived in U.S. territory from Cuba as payment.

Ana Margarita Martínez has once again made headlines following the release of the film Wasp Network on Netflix in June 2020. The film, which premiered in the Official Selection at 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 a "resounding failure for being based on a mediocre book, full of inaccuracies and fabrications, written by a well-known supporter of Fidel Castro." She also had words for the Cuban actress Ana de Armas, who plays 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 allowing herself to be used to portray an outrage against the Cuban-American community," Martínez said in exclusive statements to Univisión 23 in Miami.