User:MarkWills

Mary McCarthy was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1900, moved to Cuba in 1924 when she married her husband, a wealthy Havana-based Spanish businessman whom she had met at the Boston Opera.

She soon became a member of Cuba’s high society, co-founding the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra and an orphanage for boys.

Her husband died in 1951, but she stayed in Cuba, even after the 1959 revolution when Fidel Castro took power and all the neighbors in her wealthy neighborhood fled to the United States.

She was not able to touch the money her husband left her after the United States imposed a trade embargo against Cuba in 1962, and had lived in near poverty for years.

In 2007, after a Canadian diplomat intervened, the U.S. government allowed her to withdraw $96 a month from the bank in Boston.

Mary had first arrived in Cuba after marrying Pedro Gomez Cueto, a Spanish businessman she met at a Boston opera. The couple earned a fortune from a leather factory in Havana, and her husband died about eight years before Castro's revolution.

The new government seized private industries, including about $4 million owned by Mary and her husband. The U.S. government froze all Cuban assets in the United States, including money -- it's unclear exactly how much -- that the couple had stashed away in a Boston bank. Most of the Cuban elite fled, but Mary stayed put. The new government allowed her to stay in her matrimonial home. She's probably the only Canadian from pre-revolutionary times still in Cuba.

When I phoned Mary recently, my questions were relayed by Elio, who was her English and piano student at age 6, later her adopted godson and now, at 50, her devoted caregiver.

Only after her 100th birthday did she stop giving lessons in piano and English.

Asked why she stayed in Cuba despite all the difficulties, Mary answers without hesitation: "Because nobody has ever been unpleasant to me. Everybody has been kind to me." With all the "loving friends" she has made in Cuba, she has never wanted to go to the United States or return to Canada. Now, even if she wanted to accept the U.S. offer to return her money if she relocates to Canada, doctors would probably advise her against traveling.

If she could speak to President Bush, she says, "I would just tell him that my husband deposited that money years ago in case I ever needed it. Now I need it to pay my doctor bills and take care of other expenses."

Initiatives undertaken by successive Canadian ambassadors in Havana and at least one Canadian consul general in Boston to shake her money loose have been almost as unproductive as Mary's own efforts, although U.S. officials have occasionally responded by offering her token remittances. Earlier this year, they agreed on a $96 monthly allowance from her Boston account. A committed Catholic, Mary prays daily, asking the Virgin of Charity, Cuba's patron saint, to intervene. So far, neither her prayers nor the wide publicity given the Reuters article have brought any response from U.S. authorities. But the article has yielded a spate of calls and visits from major international media outlets. The interviews are tiring, but Elio jokes, "The old lady is happy because she thinks she's a movie star."

But I'd like her to receive more than good press; I'd like her to get her money back. Is there hope that her fate might be disentangled from the sad, out-of-date complexities of U.S.-Cuban relations? Like the diplomatic impasse, she's well past the 100-year mark. And she is mortal, even if the U.S.-Cuban enmity is not.