COULD this be the world's oldest person?
Carmelo Flores Laura lives high in the Bolivian mountains, chews coca leaves, cooks on open fires and says he's 123 years old.
He was born on July 16, 1890, according to his government identification card. Bolivia's Electoral Tribunal has confirmed his identity and his age.
"His residence is in Frasquia, and as a profession he is a farmer," the office says.
According to the document, the Bolivian Methuselah was born the same year as Charles de Gaulle and Ho Chi Mihn, and 13 years before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
According to the Guinness World Records, the world's oldest person whose age could be verified was a French woman, Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at 122.
The official world's oldest man is 112 year-old Salustiano Sanchez Blazquez, a Spaniard living in New York.
Government officials in La Paz say they will approach Guinness to update their records with information on their aged compatriot.
Flores Laura speaks only speaks Aymara, the language of the Andean natives of Peru and Bolivia.
He is 1.6 metres tall, has no teeth and walks with some difficulty but without a cane. He does not wear glasses.
When outside he wears a wool cap known as a chullo that covers his ears under his broad-brimmed hat - protection from both the bitter cold and bright sunlight of the Bolivian altiplano.
Frasquia is a quiet cluster of adobe-brick buildings 4050 metres above sea level and about 100 kilometres northwest of La Paz.
The hamlet is near Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake, and at the foot of the snow-capped Mount Illampu.
There is a school, a small clinic and access to electricity, but the nearest grocery is a three-hour walk away in the town of Arista. Onions, potato and broad beans are grown, watered by runoff from Illampu's snow.
Flores Laura arrived in Frasquia as a young man from a nearby village searching for work, and fell in love with a local widow. The couple married and had three children.
"She died a long time ago," Flores Laura said, speaking through an interpreter.
His wife was 107 years old when she died, according to Flores Laura's 27-year-old grandson.
Two of the old man's children have also died.
"I only have one surviving son, Cecilio," Flores Laura said. He lives in the working class town of El Alto, just outside of the capital La Paz.
Flores Laura also has 14 grandchildren, and 39 great-grandchildren.
With a mouth full of coca leaves, Carmelo Flores Laura recounts passages of his long life in short bursts, speaking slowly and with difficulty.
When he was young he worked as a farmhand for a wealthy landowner named Mollinedo.
Later he fought in the 1932 to 1935 Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay.
He also recalls participating in many of the uprisings and coups that shook Bolivia in the 20th century.
However, his memory has faded and he doesn't remember any of the causes or leaders he fought for.
