WITH her wealth confiscated by Fidel Castro, Mary McCarthy Gomez Cueto, the Canadian widow of a Cuban businessman, became so impoverished during his long rule that her plight threatened to become an international cause celebre - until the American administration agreed to let her draw money from a bank account in Boston.
The United States has kept a rigorous embargo on Cuba since it turned communist in 1959, but the Canadian government intervened to explain that she needed money for medicines. In 2007 she was permitted to draw $US96 a month from the account.
Mary McCarthy, who has died aged 108, was the daughter of an Irish-born merchant who supplied groceries to the fishing fleets in St Johns, Newfoundland. She was studying music in Boston when she met Pedro Gomez Cueto, a dashing Spanish businessman who exported leather goods. After their wedding in 1923 the couple took a seven-month tour of Europe. They moved to Havana in 1940, where Gomez Cueto built his fortune making military boots for the Americans in World War II.
He died in 1950, leaving McCarthy rich - until Castro confiscated her holdings, valued at $US4 million, and granted her a monthly pension of about $US9. However, while other members of the middle class fled to Miami to await what they expected to be only a brief interruption to their life in Cuba, she vowed never to abandon the island or to marry again.
She was not, however, forgotten: there were telegrams for her 100th birthday from the Queen and Pope John Paul II; and photographs on a table showed her with the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and the guitarist Andres Segovia.
Castro himself would greet her at the annual Canadian embassy party with, "I know your face - but I don't remember who you are."
McCarthy was lively and outspoken into extreme old age and admitted to conflicting views about Castro and his revolution. She conceded that the illiteracy and the poverty had ended and was glad that her money had been put to good use. But she disliked communism and was adamant that it was wrong to confiscate her property.
She was deeply unimpressed when a settlement for homeless children, called Boys' Town, which she had helped a local priest to found, was taken over to house soldiers guarding Soviet nuclear missiles.
She played the organ at her church into her nineties, until it needed $US10,000 to be repaired, and then was filmed for a television documentary singing and pressing the silent keys. She gave piano and English lessons even after her 100th birthday and continued to make regular visits to St Johns, where she would buy the right tyres for her elderly Cadillac.
She was confined to a wheelchair after breaking a hip in 2002 but continued to wear a satin dress, silk blouse, chiffon scarf and lipstick for visitors. But she was reduced to wearing plastic pearls instead of the jewellery that was in the First National Bank in Boston; and she was keenly aware that the joy had gone out of Havana, even if there was full employment.
Mary McCarthy Gomez Cueto drew strength from her determination to outlive Castro and her Catholic faith. Each day she said the rosary to seek the aid of Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of Charity, to whom Castro's mother also had a strong devotion.