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 Health & Beauty | June 2005 
Does This Man Look Like He's Almost 125?
 Gary Marx - Chicago Tribune
| | Benito Martinez says he is the world's oldest man. He is shown here holding his Cuban identity card that lists his birth date as June 19, 1880. (Photo: Gary Marx/KRT) |
Benito Martinez lives in a senior citizens home in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. He uses a cane and has a weak heart, lower back pain and arthritis in his knees. But his hearing is sharp, he doesn't wear glasses and he has never been hospitalized.
According to Martinez, he will turn 125 on June 19. "I am the oldest person in the world," he said last week. "I am telling the truth."
Guinness World Records list the world's oldest person as a 114-year-old Dutch woman. But Cuban officials believe the title may belong to Martinez, a Haitian immigrant who arrived by steamship to Cuba around 1920 and has led a life of hard labor.
He has no documents to support his claim. He never married and has no living relatives.
But Cuban journalist Moises González said he has interviewed several Cubans born around the turn of the 20th Century who knew Martinez and back up his story.
Despite being a poor country, the average life expectancy for Cubans is 77 years, the same as that for residents of the United States.
Martinez said he spent most of his life living in a thatched-roof shack, shoeless, cutting sugar cane and growing bananas, yucca and other crops on his small patch of land outside Ciego de Ávila.
Martinez said his positive outlook has helped him live long. "I've never cheated anyone," he said. "I've never said bad things about other people." |
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