Celino Villanueva Jaramillo, thought to have been born in 1896, died in hospital after puncturing his lung falling out of bed

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A Chilean man believed to be the world’s oldest person has died in hospital at the age of 121.



Celino Villanueva Jaramillo, whom the Guardian met and interviewed last year, died on Wednesday in the southern Chilean town of San José de Mariquina.

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The centenarian, born on 25 July 1896 but who had not been recognised by Guinness due to the lack of official verification of his date of birth, had fallen out of bed a week previously and broken three ribs, one of which pierced a lung.

After an emergency operation and being placed in intensive care, doctors were originally optimistic he would survive. But in the last couple of days his damaged lung became critical, and on Tuesday a priest was called to deliver the last rites.

“We’re very sad,” said Ivonne Morales, who together with her mother Marta Ramírez had adopted Celino when he was 99 years old and destitute. “He was an integral part of our family, the man of the house.”

Although feted by politicians, including Chile’s billionaire president, Sebastian Piñera, as the country’s oldest recognised citizen, Villanueva never received any specialist care, or the family that had adopted him any institutional support or the provision of geriatric home-helps.

A hospital stay in July 2017 also proved to be traumatic and debilitating for the centenarian, who ended up strapped to his bed and heavily medicated for two weeks to stop him demanding to be allowed to use the bathroom.

In an interview in February, Marta Ramírez, herself a spritely 85 years old, was adamant she would not put her very elderly guest into an old-people’s home: “I’m tired and it’s not easy looking after him with no support – but he just wouldn’t survive in a home, they die there so quickly,” she told the Guardian.

Celino Villanueva, a farm worker who had never married and had no known living relatives, will be buried on Friday morning in the Indigenous Cemetery of Mehuín.