Guitar-strumming Bolivian Julia Flores Colque may be last survivor of the 19th century
Her national identity card says she is 117 years and 10 months old, which would make the oldest person alive, and the third oldest of all time
Julia Flores Colque still sings with joy in her indigenous Quechua tongue and strums the five strings of a tiny Andean guitar known as the charango, despite a recorded age of almost 118 years.
In her long life, she has witnessed two world wars, revolutions in her native Bolivia and the transformation of her rural town of Sacaba from 3,000 people to a bustling city of more than 175,000 in five decades.
Her national identity card says Flores Colque was born on October 26, 1900, in a mining camp in the Bolivian mountains. At 117 and just over 10 months, she would be the oldest woman in the Andean nation, the oldest living person in the world, the third longest-lived person of all time, and the last living person born in the 19th Century.
But Guinness World Records says it has received no application for her and Flores Colque doesn’t seem to care that her record hasn’t been confirmed. She hasn’t even heard of the reference book.
