Netflix's latest venture into the audacious-but-true-story-turned-film genre is Wasp Network. The movie synopsis reads: "René González is a Cuban pilot who leaves his wife and young daughter behind in the communist island nation to defect to the United States and begin a new life of freedom in the early 1990s.
But René is not the upstart American striver he appears to be. Joining forces with a group of Cuban exiles in South Florida known as the Wasp Network – led by undercover operative Manuel Viramontez aka Gerardo Hernandez – he becomes part of a pro-Castro spy ring tasked with observing and infiltrating Cuban-American terror groups intent upon attacking the socialist republic."
The movie loosely explains the convoluted story, introducing a narration mid-movie to try and explain to the audience what the act of storytelling failed to address. Unfortunately, even with the random narration, much detail is left out.
Which is where we come in. This is the true story of the Wasp Network, but fair warning: there will be plenty of spoilers for the movie.
There are essentially three major groups at play: the Wasp network/pro-community Cuban spies, the American government, and the Cuban exiles who want to overthrow communism. The confusing element is that, like life, none of these players are simply the good or bad guys.
Our main character René (Edgar Ramírez) spends the first half of the film presenting as a Cuban defector to America, where he is free to condemn Cuba, Castro, and Communism. We eventually learn that he is one of the aforementioned spies, a main player in the Wasp Network.
He is eventually joined in the USA by another "defector" Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura). Both are pilots, and both are quickly recruited to the Cuban exile groups working to overthrow Castro.
The first group the movie focusses on is Brothers to the Rescue, led by Jose Basulto (Leonardo Sbaraglia) which uses planes to identify rafts of Cuban refugees fleeing to Miami. They also fly into Cuban airspace to distribute anti-Castro fliers.
But the men also have to grapple with the lives they left behind. Rene abandoned his wife Olga (Penelope Cruz) and their young daughter. Juan, however, quickly becomes involved with a woman named Ana Martinez (Ana De Armas) and they marry.
The two begin flying for a different group, the Cuban American National Foundation (led by Jorge Mas Canosa) which funds anti-Castro movements, making money through drugs trafficking. The two men subsequently become FBI informants, along with some other Cuban defectors.
Their motives, however, are not just money – though the FBI pays handsomely – but rather that they are themselves pro-Castro, and by stifling CANF's fundraising and getting their members arrested, are thus furthering the pro-Castro agenda.
America, it is worth noting, has been happy to turn a blind eye to all sorts of heinous crimes, from genocide to drug trafficking, when it suits their political interest. But CANF is becoming violent, and they begin combing Cuban tourist sites to strike at the country's economy.
These activities were led by Luis Posada Carriles, who was formerly a CIA agent (see how blurry the lines get?), who frequently cited Castro's hatred of him for the claims of terrorism against him.
We then meet the man leading the Wasp network — Gerardo Hernandez (Gael García Bernal), with many other spies working further down the food chain, so to speak, to pass information back to Cuba about the inner workings of the anti-Castro organisations. Gerardo and René are two of the real-life Cuban Five, which also includes Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, and Fernando González (none of whom are mentioned in the film).
During this time, perhaps sensing the changing tide in America, Juan re-defected back to Cuba. He claimed at the time that he wasn't working on behalf of the Cuban communist government, and only returned to Cuba because he caught wind of the drugs trafficking and terrorist activities and didn't want to be involved with them anymore.
It just so happened that his re-defection came one day before two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down by Cuba. The American government was then pressured into turning on their informants, with whom they'd been happy to work previously.
When it was discovered that the faux-defectors had passed on the information leading directly to the deaths of the Brothers to the Rescue pilots, the FBI eventually arrested Gerardo Hernandez, Rene and several others.
They were all indicted on various charges, including false identification and conspiracy to commit espionage, with Gerardo Hernández later being indicted for conspiracy to commit murder in the shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes.
They were all found guilty of all charges. Years later, in 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights' Working Group on Arbitrary Detention report stated that: "the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality that is required in order to conform to the standards of a fair trial as defined in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States of America is a party."
In the United Kingdom, 110 Members of Parliament wrote an open letter to the US Attorney General in support of the Cuban Five. Likewise, eight international Nobel Prize winners wrote to the US Attorney General calling for freedom for the Cuban Five.
René González was released in 2011 and put on three-year parole but permitted to return to Cuba for his father's funeral in 2013. He was allowed to remain in Cuba, provided that he renounce his United States citizenship.
In 2012 the Havana Times reported that America declined an exchange of prisoners: Cuba wanted the Cuban Five in exchange for United States Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross. Cuba claimed he was a spy, while America claimed he'd been imprisoned only for providing technology to Cuban Jews giving them internet access.
The New York Times reported that "American officials did not want to appear to be trading three convicted spies for Mr Gross, who they maintained had been unjustly imprisoned."
Continuing the strange-but-true nature of this story, negotiations began on another prisoner exchange and US Senator Patrick J. Leahy met with Gerardo Hernández's wife while in Cuba visiting Alan Gross. She asked him to arrange a way for her to become pregnant by her husband.
The New York Times continued: "Mr Leahy won approval for Mr Hernández to try artificial insemination, and Cuban officials transported his sperm to a fertility clinic in Panama." Mr Leahy said: "I didn’t ask for any quid pro quo, but I was asking for medical treatment and better accommodations for Alan Gross, and as they worked out the impregnation of this woman, suddenly his situation improved considerably."
In 2014, a prisoner exchange did finally take place. It coincided with Cuba's release of Alan Gross, though both Cuba and America claim this had nothing to do with the exchange.
As for Juan Pablo Roque, in 2012 he told The Miami Herald: "If I could travel in a time machine I'd get those boys off the planes that were shot down." However, many question the sincerity of his statements, including Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto who claimed Roque "was instrumental" in the shooting and there's “nothing to be forgiven about that. He’s just guilty.”
Likewise, his ex-wife Ana Margarita said: "If you look up the definition of sociopath, it describes him well." Roque meanwhile claims he wants peace between the US, Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam: "I hope that moment arrives and we’ll sit down at a table and smoke a peace pipe. Well, I don’t smoke, but I’ll hold it in my hand, too. With pleasure, with pleasure, I’ll do it."
Cuba has refused to extradite Roque for his 1999 indictments of defrauding the FBI and failing to register as a foreign agent. Cuban exiles in South Florida still think of him as a traitor.
To say there's more to this story than meets the eye is an understatement, and it's likely we have only scratched the surface. Unfortunately, the movie itself doesn't give us much more insight, either emotional or factual, into the tangled web of the Wasp Network.
Wasp Network is available to stream on Netflix now
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