The Macorina (María Calvo Nodarse) (Guanajay, 1892 - Havana, 15th June 1977) was the first female driver in Havana, the first woman who obtained the driver license at the beginning of 20th century.

Her audacity and beauty allowed her to enter the most selected circles of the Cuban society at that time; she had an attractive personality and beautiful eyes that helped her become one of the most elegant and famous prostitutes of the time. She was neither a prostitute in the indiscriminate meaning associated with this profession, nor worked in a brothel, but she prostituted herself selectively. And she began her quick career to wealth, as she said in an interview by Guillermo Villarronda for the magazine Bohemia on 26th October 1958: “More than a dozen men remained surrendered to my feet, flooded of money,

pleading for love”. She was a friend of rich Havanese men dedicated to politics and business, among whom José Miguel Gómez (popularly known as “Tiburón” [Shark]), whom she helped with her loyalty during the successes of “La Chambelona”.

Regarding the origin of his nickname “Macorina”, it is said that once, while Maria was walking down the sidewalk of the Louvre, a young man who had drunk more than necessary told the woman: “There goes the Macorina!” when he really meant the Fornarina (whose true name was Consuelo Bello), a famous Spanish cabaret singer, contemporary of the Spanish Raquel Meller and the Cuban “Chelito”. He wanted to compare her to the Fornarina but his drunkenness made ​​him say “Macorina”.

After having accumulated wealth and being part of the most selective social circles of Havana, the national economic situation was no monger so prosperous, but perhaps the incontrovertible fact was that the Macorina was then 42 years old. The past friends were invoking excuses every time she asked them for help, and thus she had to sell all her belongings, from jewelry to houses and cars: Macorina ended in the most absolute poverty, living in a room she rented in a familiar house in Havana. Macorina began to lose popularity and youth inexorably, she had to sell her nine cars, four mansions, dresses, jewelry, furs, everything and died almost in misery. Qualified by someone as the Mata Hari Cuban, it is known that Macorina, besides being the first woman who obtained a driving license and drove a car, she made a dissolute life, which in her elderly years she regretted. She died in Havana.

Macorina was so popular that not only she has two musical compositions in her honor and a painting by Cundo Bermúdez, but was immortalized by the famous Bejucal charanga (traditional ensembles of Cuban dance music), celebrated in December, and where in the parades of characters a big doll with a mask appeared under which there was its creator, a mason named Lorenzo Romero Miñoso. About her the Asturian Alfonso Camin wrote his famous poem “Macorina” (included in his book “Carey”) that the Costa Rican singer Chavela Vargas (naturalized Mexican) transformed into one of the most popular songs of her career.