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• History
• Personalities
• 01 / 24 / 2007

By the name of Maria Calvo Nodarse was issued the first driving license issued to a woman in Havana at the beginning of the last century.

This first woman chauffeur in the island came from the Guanajay town in Pinar del Rio where she was born in the year 1892. At that time, her name was María Constancia Caraza Valdés.

In Havana city, she lived in Galiano street, very close to Malecon.

Her boldness, smartness, her bright eyes and some many other qualities made her to attract peoples attention. Also, her special personality and charisma enjoyed by those from the most elitist society of the Havana capital at that time.

She had a white Hispo-Suiza car. She used to travel all over the Havana city with a speed of 30 kilometers per hour while she listened to the music in fashion on full volume.

Although her fame was that of a woman admired by everybody without any distinction, he had a love that marked her forever. According to what she herself told in one of her many press interviews, he could not support their finances. The young woman believed to make the great mistake of her life accepting a proposal of getting a luxurious life status. It was when a new period began in the life of that unequal woman, when she was called "Macorina"

That "profession" brought her from great humiliations to the most popular danzon sang in any corner of Havana... "Ponme la mano aquí, Macorina, pon..." ( Put your hand here, Macorina, out your hand here....)

Her nickname came from one of her regular drives around the most crowded streets of the city, when a drunkard mistook her for a popular cuplés singer known as La Fornarina. The aforementioned took her for the singer and thought her name was "Macorina", then he repeated it in person amid laughter from the passers-by who since then awarded that recognition.

This Cuban woman was an active defender of womens rights, she is still remembered leading a bright and colorful cars caravan with attractive women.

At the end of her youth and fame, she got rid of her nine cars, her four mansions, her dresses and her coveted jewelry and furs, in general, all her patrimony to remain almost in poverty.