Ex-Cuban Air Force Major Juan Pablo Roque impressed admirers with a story about his swim through shark-infested waters to reach the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Station in 1992. Once ashore, he requested political asylum, telling US officials he was disenchanted with Fidel Castro's communist regime. 

At least, that’s how Roque recalled events in an interview with CiberCuba: "Before swimming, I was hidden in the trunk of a Soviet GAZ-69 jeep that was full of bolts, nuts, and washers, which got embedded in my body, and once in the sea, a fish wounded me on the side and I had to be hospitalized on the base.”

Roque - who referred to himself as ‘Richard Gere’s Cuban double’ - claimed he was interrogated at Guantanamo and that Americans believed his opposition to Castro was genuine. Within a few months, Juan Pablo - now known as JP - was living with relatives in Miami and treated as a hero by Florida’s Cuban community. He even published an autobiography about his exploits, but was Deserter fact or fiction? 

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The Cuban network

Nothing was quite what it seemed in Miami in the ‘90s. Cops and crooks dressed in Miami Vice-inspired pastels and rubbed shoulders with gangsters and supermodels. Meanwhile, at least five Cuban intelligence officers - known later as the Wasp Network - masqueraded as Cuban exiles hoping to overturn Fidel Castro. In reality, Havana was bankrolling the five spies to infiltrate the anti-Castro groups in Florida and feed information back to the Cuban government.

JP Roque mingled with Cuban exiles (some later accused of being Castro's spies) but he was seemingly on a mission of his own. The MiG-trained fighter pilot joined Brothers to the Rescue (Hermanos al Rescate), a non-profit group of exiled Cuban pilots who flew humanitarian missions across the Florida Straits to rescue stranded refugees trying to escape Havana by raft or boat. JP’s association with Brothers to the Rescue cemented his reputation as an enemy of Castro and communism.

Roque’s daring pilot stories made him a popular figure. Women trailed after him but JP married a single mother called Ana Martinez, becoming a father to her two children. At the time, Ana had no idea the marriage was part of a double-cross operation orchestrated from Havana. JP, it seemed, was still loyal to Castro.

Married to a spy

Roque told Ana he was leaving for a business trip early one morning in 1996 and disappeared. They’d been dating for three years and hadn’t yet celebrated their first wedding anniversary. "Can you imagine waking up one day and finding out the last four years of your life have been a lie?" Martinez asked in an interview with The Guardian. "That you have been married to a spy? I felt so betrayed, used, violated. I saw that our relationship had been a farce. I was humiliated in my community. I felt so much anger." 

Ana vented her anger by suing the Cuban government for rape, arguing that her marital relations with JP were not consensual because they were derived by fraud and concealment. She eventually won the case. Long before she reached the courthouse, however, JP’s cover story began unraveling in a plot resembling a spy thriller.

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Brothers to the Rescue tragedy

The Rolex watch JP so proudly wore was actually bought with money he’d earned spying on Brothers to the Rescue pilots for the FBI. Not content with just the one spymaster, JP was also accused of being on Cuba’s payroll, working as a double agent feeding intelligence back from Miami to Havana. JP’s 1996 “business trip” was actually the cover story for his return to Cuba where JP resurfaced on television shortly after his disappearance. It was a tumultuous and horrifying 72 hours. 

Roque disappeared from Miami on February 23, 1996. The following day, two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down over international waters by Cuban MiG pilots. Four American pilots were killed. Cuba claimed they were terrorists invading Havana’s airspace, a claim repeated by JP Roque. 

Roque reappeared on Cuban television on February 26, 1996, and declared his allegiance to Castro. He denounced Brothers to the Rescue as a terrorist cell. Asked what he would miss most about his Florida home, he simply replied, "My Jeep." His marriage, it appeared, was part of JP’s cover to gain the trust of the Brothers to the Rescue group he infiltrated.

JP Roque: a double agent? 

Was Roque a double agent working for both the FBI and Havana? Many believe he was part of a Cuban operation to discredit the four dead Brothers to the Rescue pilots. Roque told CNN, however, that he provided the FBI with intelligence about anti-Castro organizations in Florida and had lost faith in Brothers to the Rescue. “I became disillusioned with people who say that they love Cuba, but they just really want to just drop bombs on Cuba over the so-called cover of humanitarian missions. They're carrying out terrorist actions.”

Did Roque feel responsible for the attacks? “My conscience is clear,” JP said. “I warned the US government they were going to shoot them down. It was madness. I did everything to avoid the deaths of my four comrades but nobody paid attention.” 

Years later, in 2012, he reframed his answer, however: “If I could travel in a time machine,” he said, “I’d get those boys off the planes that were shot down.”

Roque, once the darling of Miami, was vilified by South Florida’s Cuban exiles. When a YouTube video showing Roque singing and drinking liquor surfaced in 2011, it attracted heated comments and was removed.

The Cuban spy network

As for the so-called Wasp Network - the biggest Cuban spy network ever uncovered in the US - at least 10 people were initially arrested in the late 1990s (some reports put the number even higher). Five of the accused accepted plea bargains with prosecutors.

Five others were tried for espionage-related crimes and accused of being in the US to observe or infiltrate Cuban-American groups including Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue. They were part of the so-called La Red Avispa (Wasp Network) known as the "Cuban Five". The men were convicted but after a lengthy appeals process were either released after serving time or traded in a spy swap with Cuba.

A Netflix movie, Wasp Network (2019) starring Penélope Cruz, dramatizes the exploits of Castro’s spies and Cuban exiles in Miami. One of the characters is based on JP’s ex-wife Ana Martinez, which triggered another lawsuit. Martinez insisted she is not the party girl portrayed in the film.

JP Roque: Richard Gere no more

Despite starring in his larger-than-life spy story, Roque now lives a quiet existence in Cuba. Born in the 1950s, he’s retired and hasn’t flown since returning to his homeland. Roque sold his prized Rolex and his family home to support himself and reportedly lives in Havana with his girlfriend.

He told the Miami Herald: "Now I live on my pension and grow fruit trees, ornamental and medicinal plants in my patio and - when you called me - I was fixing my French Peugeot car, which is complicated by a lack of parts. I live like other Cubans."

He apparently sees his time in Florida as the peak of his career, calling it his “four best professional years. And all of the sudden, as pilots say, the engines went out.”