The native Aymara lives in a straw-roofed dirt-floor hut in an isolated hamlet
near Lake Titicaca at 13,100 feet, is illiterate, speaks no Spanish and has
no teeth.
He walks without a cane and does not wear glasses. "I see a bit dimly. I
had good vision before. But I saw you coming," he told an Associated
Press journalists who visited after a local TV report touted him as the
world's oldest person.
Carmelo Flores Laura sits outside his house in the village of Frasquia,
Bolivia (AP)
Hobbling down a dirt path, Flores greets them with a raised arm, smiles and
sits down on a rock. His gums bulge with coca leaf, a mild stimulant that
staves off hunger. Like most Bolivian
highlands peasants, he has been chewing it all his life.
Guinness World Records says the oldest living person verified by original
proof of birth is Misao Okawa, a 115-year-old Japanese woman. The oldest
verified age was 122 years and 164 days: Jeanne Calment of France, who died
in 1997.
Guinness spokeswoman Jamie Panas said it was not aware of a claim being filed
for the Bolivian.
"I should be about 100 years old or more," Flores says. But his
memory is dim.
The identification document of Carmelo Flores Laura (EPA)
Flores' 27-year-old grandson Edwin said Flores fought in the 1933 Chaco war
with Paraguay but he only faintly remembers.
The director of Bolivia's civil registrar, Eugenio Condori, showed The
Associated Press the registry that lists Flores' birth date as July 16,
1890.
Condori said birth certificates did not exist in Bolivia until 1940. Births
previously were registered with baptism certificates provided by Roman
Catholic priests.
"For the state, the baptism certificate is valid," Condori said. He
said he could not show Flores' baptism certificate to the AP because it is a
private document.
To what does Flores owe his longevity?
"I walk a lot, that's all. I go out with the animals," says Flores,
who long herded cattle and sheep. "I don't eat noodles or rice, only
barley. I used to grow potatoes, beans, oca (an Andean tuber)."
The water Flores drinks originates on the snow-capped peak of Illampu, one of
Bolivia's highest.
He says he does not drink alcohol, but imbibed some in his youth. He has eaten
a lot of mutton, and though he likes pork it is hardly available. He fondly
remembers hunting and eating fox as a younger man.
Flores says he has never been further afield than La Paz, 50 miles away, and
has never been seriously ill.
He sorely misses his wife, who died more than a decade ago. Of their three
children only one is still alive: Cecilio, age 67. There are 40
grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren but most have left Frasquia, a
dozen homes a two-hour walk from the nearest road.
Edwin Flores, who lives next door with his wife and their two children, says
his grandfather worked for the rancher who owned Frasquia until 1952, when
the state seized major holdings in an agrarian reform and parcelled them out
to peasants.
Although electrical power arrived three years ago, time seems to have stood
still in Frasquia. Peasants still prepare chuno, or dehydrated and chilled
potatoes, and till the soil with ox-driven ploughs. Donkeys bray and sheep
and cattle graze.
Most everyone is elderly or middle-aged. The young people are mostly gone.
Edited for Telegraph.co.uk by Barney
Henderson
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