Colombian Man Allegedly 118 Years Old Passes Away

Jesus Elias Loaiza Arenas, the man who claimed to be 118 years old, and therefore would be the longest-lived person in Colombia, passed away this Thursday, February 15. Loaiza was born in the municipality of Amalfi, Antioquia, on February 22, 1905, so in a week he would have been 119 years old.

The deceased supercentenarian lived with his wife Hermelina in a peasant house in the village of El Zacatin, in his native Amalfi, which is reached by a bridle path. Together they had 11 children and were married for more than 70 years. She died in September last year, five months ago, at the age of 91.

A much loved person in his homeland

In his municipality he was known as the “founder” of the town, even though it dates back to 1838. However, the many historic events that Loaiza lived through made him the memory of Amalfi. The oldest inhabitant of Colombia stood out because he always enjoyed good health and had no major illnesses throughout his long life.

“I don’t know about pills, I have never been sick in my life. I don’t have a toothache (…) because I don’t have teeth” he said laughing a few years ago in an interview to the Antioquian newspaper El Colombiano. But the recent death of his wife saw a sudden downswing in the mood of the supercentenarian. “From that moment on, Jesús Elias gave himself up to sadness and today he ceased to exist,” explained a report from Amalfi.

Until a few years ago, the couple, Jesús Elias and Hemelina, lived in a humble rural house, where they arrived forty years ago, fleeing from the internal violence of the country. Then, in 2021, their neighbors and relatives pooled their resources to build a more dignified house for the elderly couple to live in for the last years of their lives. It should be noted that Jesús Elias had more than 170 descendants, including children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

The life of a simple man

According to the interview with the Antioquia media in 2021, his routine had been the same for the last 40 years. “He gets up every day at 5:30 in the morning, wraps himself in his ruana and walks slowly to an armchair of worn-out wood and worn-out cushions located in the hallway of his house. He turns on the radio, listens to the mass and drinks a red wine, cerrero. In the half-light you can only see the red dot that flashes every time he takes a puff of his cigarette. Then the puff of smoke comes out. From the corridor he sees the two red brick towers of the church where he was baptized. He thinks of his younger years, of the time he lived in Yolombó and when he returned to his homeland.”

“When the day begins to lighten, the old man, as his children call him, gets up from the armchair and goes to the bedroom. He looks for the clothes he is going to wear that day, which are usually long-sleeved, plaid shirts, a pair of cloth pants and a pair of black boots. He bathes with the collected rainwater, gets dressed, has another cup of coffee and goes to the garden,” says the Colombian newspaper with which he had an interview almost three years ago.

According to the story, Loaiza worked in the fields until almost the end of his days. The farmer, who explained that he could not live far from his land, always said that the secret of his longevity was to stay “far from vices.”

The memory of a country

The death of Jesús Elias Loaiza marks the end of the memory of more than a century of Colombian history, involving dozens of events that marked the history of the place and the Colombian character, all happening during the very long life of this humble peasant from Antioquia.

These include the terrible earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Colombian Pacific coast in January 1906; the assassination of liberal leader Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914; the massacre of the Bananeras in 1928; the assassination of popular leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1948; the era of violence that followed; the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship in 1953; the creation of the two most important guerrilla groups in the country, the FARC and the ELN, in 1964; the growing power of criminal gangs in Colombia with the rise of drug trafficking in the 1970s and 1980s and the events of the Palace of Justice in 1985.

Loaiza also witnessed, in the 21st century, the end of the hegemony of Colombia’s two traditional parties in 2002, with the coming to power of Alvaro Uribe; the peace process that ended the FARC in 2016; the electoral victory of the country’s first leftist president, with Gustavo Petro in 2022, as well as many other events in Colombian history over the last 118 years.

Although officially the oldest person in the world is the U.S.-born Spaniard Maria Branyas Morera, who is about to turn 117 years old, the death of this supercentenarian Colombian farmer is a significant event which has moved his entire community.