Mary McCarthy Gomez Cueto

Life & Legacy

Mary McCarthy Gomez Cueto (April 27, 1900 – April 3, 2009) was the widow of a wealthy Cuban businessman who died in poverty, unwilling to leave the island and unable to access her funds because of the US embargo on trade with Cuba. After her husband's death in 1951, and following the takeover of the Island under a Communist regime, she had become an anachronism, and ended her life in poverty, bereft of her wealth due to the U.S. embargo, and granted a tiny pension by the Castro government. A victim of political circumstance, she died there at the age of 108, and was buried next to her husband.