Revenge of the divorcée
Ana Margarita Martinez
Ana Margarita Martinez, the ex-wife of Cuban double agent Juan Pablo Roque, is attempting to file a lawsuit in Florida against American companies that provide travel service between Florida and Cuba. If she's successful in freezing funds those companies currently pay to Cuba's Havanatur, it could make it more difficult for Cuban Americans to visit relatives in their homeland.
News of the lawsuit comes from Inter Press Services, quoting reports in Mexico's La Jornada newspaper.
1995 wedding: in happier times
In 2000, Martinez won an unprecedented "rape" case ruling against Roque—essentially for not telling her he was a spy when he married her in 1995, less than a year before he returned to Cuba. The next year, the Florida courts ordered the Cuban government to pay Martinez $27 million in damages for what the Miami Herald described as "her pain and suffering as a victim of Roque's spy scheme and in punitive damages because Roque used his sham marriage to infiltrate South Florida's Cuban exile community and Brothers to the Rescue, the volunteer pilots who search the seas for Cuban rafters."
"These writs are not about politics or U.S. Cuba relations, and they are not about the right to travel to Cuba," Martinez argued in a press release. "They are not a political act or an effort to hurt U.S. businesses or interfere with air travel to Cuba."
Martinez is attempting to interest a Hollywood filmmaker into making a movie of her story.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Things to know before you go…
"Canadians and other foreigners travelling to Cuba now need to hold travel insurance approved by island authorities before they can enjoy their time in the sun.
"Those without coverage will have to buy a local policy that can cost up to $3 a day. The new law took effect Saturday (May 1, 2010) and requires travellers who can't show they have authorized insurance to buy a policy from state-run Cubatur before being allowed into the country..."
If you're planning to visit Cuba, you should also read my cautionary tale about using credit cards in Cuba
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
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About
This is the site for What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, collected research and other materials for an in-progress narrative nonfiction book about the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber.
The Cuban Five were members of "La Red Avispa"—the Wasp Network—spies Havana dispatched to Florida in the early 1990s to infiltrate militant anti-Castro exile groups that Cuba believed were plotting terrorist attacks on its soil. The Cuban Five were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to long prison terms in the United States.
In the United States, they are virtually unknown. In Cuba, they are heroes.
That’s the short version of the story. The long version is… well, more complicated... Stay tuned.
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