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Guinness spokeswoman Jamie Panas said it wasn’t aware of a claim being filed for the Bolivian.

“I should be about 100 years old or more,” Flores says. But his memory is dim.

Flores’ 27-year-old grandson Edwin says Flores fought in the 1933 Chaco war with Paraguay but he only faintly remembers.

The director of Bolivia’s civil registrar, Eugenio Condori, showed The Associated Press the registry that lists Flores’ birthdate as July 16, 1890.

Condori said birth certificates did not exist in Bolivia until 1940. Births previously were registered with baptism certificates provided by Roman Catholic priests.

“For the state, the baptism certificate is valid,” Condori said. He said he couldn’t show Flores’ baptism certificate to the AP because it is a private document.

To what does Flores owe his longevity?

“I walk a lot, that’s all. I go out with the animals,” says Flores, who long herded cattle and sheep. “I don’t eat noodles or rice, only barley. I used to grow potatoes, beans, oca (an Andean tuber).”

The water Flores drinks originates on the snow-capped peak of Illampu, one of Bolivia’s highest.

He says he doesn’t drink alcohol, but imbibed some in his youth. He’s eaten a lot of mutton, and though he likes pork it is hardly available. He fondly remembers hunting and eating fox as a younger man.

Flores says he has never been farther afield than La Paz, 80 kilometers away, and has never been seriously ill.

He sorely misses his wife, who died more than a decade ago. Of their three children only one is still alive: Cecilio, age 67. There are 40 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren but most have left Frasquia, a dozen homes a two-hour walk from the nearest road.