Work key to long life, spry 121-year-old man says
Garcia has never given Guinness World Records team a call but says he doesn’t feel a day over 80
You wouldn’t know it watching him take care of his chickens on the family farm, but according to his birth certificate and official Mexican ID, Manuel Garcia Hernandez is 121 years old.
Garcia, who may just be the world’s oldest man, was born on December 24, 1896, according to his birth certificate from the Mexican state of Veracruz and his official identity card from the National Electoral Institute.
He has never bothered calling the people at Guinness World Records to make it official.
But if his documents are correct, he is more than eight years older than Masazo Nonaka of Japan, the man who currently holds the title — born on July 25, 1905. Anyway, age is only a number. Garcia says he doesn’t feel a day over 80. He says he only has two regrets in his very long life: losing his father at a young age, and the fact he can no longer work.
Yet he is impressively spry as he tosses feed to his chickens at the home he shares with his daughter Tomasa in Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico.
“I’m happy, but I do feel tired. I’m making an effort, because if I just lay in bed or sat in a chair all day, then I would get sick,” said Garcia, dressed in his trademark cowboy hat and Western shirt.
“I feel like I’m 80 years old — though I’m starting to stumble a bit when I walk,” he told AFP.
Garcia has seen a dizzying amount in his lifetime, from the arrival of electricity to the invention of television, the Mexican Revolution and the election of US President Donald Trump.