He outwitted all the world’s police under the name of Black Eagle. But the real name of this great international man was José Roque Ramírez. He was born in the town of Tacajo, in the province of Holguin, in 1887 and died in 1977. However, chronicler Ángel Quintana recounts in his book The Black Eagle that his story began at age 12, when he began his pranks.
They say he was barely a teenager when he stole a horse belonging to a circus. Although he was later caught in another town.
Pepito, as his family called him, began living beyond his means when the police of the time began tracking him until they discovered him involved in a network of counterfeit dollar traffickers, which earned him a 14-year prison sentence that he never served.
El Águila flew and managed to escape, hiding in an aunt’s house for three long years. During which he learned to read and write, until he decided to return to his hometown and was arrested and sent to a prison in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.
While in prison, he became involved with an elderly inmate, with whom he began shady business dealings within the prison. In conjunction with a lawyer, leading to the life of an “unusual millionaire.”
Luckily for him, El Murciélago, as his elderly friend was known, gave him a leather belt laden with gold coins shortly before his death. This allowed El Águila to survive until he obtained a government pardon, thanks to the fact that his cousin was the wife of a cabinet minister.
José Roque Ramírez lived a tycoon’s life after earning 11,000 Cuban pesos in just two days playing cards. He also enjoyed a life of traveling on modern ocean liners to various countries, even as far away as Asia.
He passed himself off as an aristocrat or a wealthy millionaire. Staying in luxury cabins and dressing elegantly.
After numerous criminal acts, Águila was sentenced in 1944 until he was released in 1954. Which was arranged by an army officer. It wasn’t until 1977, after serving a long sentence, already in his sixties, that he died in Mexico at the age of 90, the victim of a stroke.
Translated by Aliani Rojas Fernandez
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