25388: Hermantin (news)At 124, is he world's oldest? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


At 124, is he world's oldest?
Island lifestyle aids longevity, his doctor says



By Gary Marx
chicago Tribune

June 12, 2005

CIEGO DE AVILA · Benito Martinez walks with a cane, speaks with a mumble and 
suffers from 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.

Not bad for a guy who says he was born June 19, 1880. That would put Martinez 
on the cusp of his 125th birthday.

"I am the oldest person in the world," said Martinez as he sat at a senior 
citizens home in this quiet provincial city about 240 miles east of Havana. "I 
am telling the truth."

While Guinness World Records lists the world's oldest person as a 114-year-old 
Dutch woman, Cuban officials think the title may belong to Martinez, a Haitian 
immigrant who arrived by steamship in Cuba around 1920 and has had a life of 
hard labor.

There are no documents to support the claim. Martinez can't produce a birth 
certificate. He never married and has no living relatives.

But Moises Gonzalez, a Cuban journalist who has become Martinez's unofficial 
biographer, said he has interviewed several Cubans born around the turn of the 
20th Century who knew Martinez and back up his story.

"They said that when they were kids he was already an adult," Gonzalez said. 
"People said that he was always the oldest of the group."

Martinez would be a marvel in any nation. His case has been embraced and 
promoted by Cuban officialdom, which has formed the 120 Years Club for the 
island's most senior citizens and last month held an international conference 
to explore the secrets of longevity.

Despite being a poor country, Cuban's life expectancy is 77 years, the same as 
that for residents of the United States.

The average life expectancy is 70 years for Nicaraguans, 69 for Brazilians and 
53 for Haitians, according to 2003 figures from the World Health Organization.

Noel Lopez, Martinez's physician, attributes Cubans' longevity to the nation's 
cradle-to-the-grave heath-care system, along with the exercise they get 
bicycling and walking are often the only ways to get around.

Many Cubans cook with pork fat and love roasted pig, but they also eat fruits 
and organic vegetables. Processed foods are either unavailable or too expensive 
for most residents.

The stress level also seems lower in socialist Cuba than in capitalist 
countries, where cellular telephones are ubiquitous, work dominates life and 
everyone is in a hurry.

"Stress is a factor that leads to many illnesses," Lopez said.

But the elderly also hold a special place in Cuba, where almost every family 
seems to have someone in their 80s living with them. Even strangers go out of 
their way to help senior citizens, offering them a chair if they are tired or a 
glass of water if they are thirsty.



Martinez said he worked briefly at President Fidel Castro's father's ranch in 
eastern Cuba and later as a laborer in the mid-1920s building the island's 
central highway.

He spent most of his life living in a thatched-roof shack, shoeless, cutting 
sugar cane during the harvest and growing bananas, yucca and other crops on his 
small patch of land outside Ciego de Avila.

He earned the nickname El Avion, the airplane, because he was such a tireless 
worker.

"All my life I've worked hard," said Martinez, who still putters around the 
garden and raises fighting cocks.

"Work never killed anybody."

Like most Cubans, Martinez drinks a strong cup of coffee in the morning, and 
his diet consists mostly of boiled root vegetables like malanga and boniato, 
the Cuban sweet potato.

He quit smoking about a decade ago and shuns alcohol except for special 
occasions.

"I drink one beer, but five or six, no," Martinez said.
Copyright © 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel