Posted by: @024tomi

@jef What about Faustino Vargas Pérez?

I believe Faustino has early, mid-life, and late-life documentation (and thus would be considered validated), but the fact that the marriage record hasn't been located yet prevents the case from being airtight. We do have birth records of his children listing the names of him and his wife as the parents, though, so we have proxy proof of marriage.

@024tomi @sailor-haumea Marita is about to become the oldest validated Costa Rican and the oldest documented woman from CR, however, I'm not sure if Jeff would agree, but I do not consider a validated recordholder to be the actual recordholder.

If you compare the number of documented (both validated and pending) SCs on LAS with the numbers for LA that the GRG had just a couple of years ago, then we have A LOT of supercentenarians, but not a single country in LA is perfectly covered, for only some such as Uruguay we can say how the data is solid. We have hundreds of unvalidated and not-researched claims just from social media, therefore who are the actual recordholders for the LA countries.. that will remain a mystery for quite a long time. Do I consider either Marita or Faustino as the recordholder for Costa Rica. Documented? Yes. The actual recordholders? No. This few posts reminded me how just recently I found a Costa Rican woman who claimed to be 113 in the early 2010s.

Faustino is currently pending. He has a very strong documentation (his marriage record has been located, Sailor), but there's still a reason why he is "pending" instead of "validated". While I do not doubt his case, and while he is nothing like "Chepito", Jose Flores and similar claimants, some family contact would probably speed the things up, but we can't really hope for that since it has been more than a decade since his passing. I probably don't have to say this, but Costa Rican male claims are... suspicious by default, so we need to be extra careful about them.

Posted by: @sailor-haumea

Posted by: @024tomi

@jef What about Faustino Vargas Pérez?

I believe Faustino has early, mid-life, and late-life documentation (and thus would be considered validated), but the fact that the marriage record hasn't been located yet prevents the case from being airtight. We do have birth records of his children listing the names of him and his wife as the parents, though, so we have proxy proof of marriage.

The "issue" with Faustino's case has never been with documentation, since he's always had more than enough to be validated. The fact that he was married for close to 80 years and lived with three of his children (all in their 70s and 80s) in his later years should give undeniable proof that he was at least the same person listed in his children's birth records, meaning that the theoretical identity theft would've needed to occur sometime before the birth of his first child in 1928, which is obviously extremely unlikely. If he were from any other country in Latin America, there wouldn't be any question about his age, but the fact that he was from Costa Rica means that there could theoretically be some sort of bizarre, early life identity swap shenanigans going on, but as I outlined above, I can't realistically see how this could be a possibility with him.

https://longeviquest.com/supercentenarian/faustino-vargas-perez/

(at the age of 111)

Faustino Perfecto del Socorro Vargas Pérez was a Costa Rican supercentenarian who is currently the oldest documented man ever from Costa Rica. He was the oldest undisputed person to have ever lived in Costa Rica until being surpassed by Marita Camacho Quirós in 2023.

He was born in Naranjo de Alajuela, Alajuela, Costa Rica on 27 September 1896. He was the youngest child born to parents José Faustino de la Concepción Vargas (1851–1920) and Manuela Margarita Pérez Murillo (1857–1945).

As a young adult, he worked as a bricklayer, before later beginning a career as an operator in the Ministry of Public Works, which involved him personally delivering telegrams to then-Costa Rican President Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno. In 1926, he married Amanda Corrales, and the pair would go on to have eleven children together. The couple would remain together for 77 years until Amanda’s death in 2003. In 1960, he retired from his career at the Ministry of Public Works, and moved with his family to the province of San José, settling in Tibás.

At the time of his 110th birthday in 2006, he remained both physically healthy and mentally lucid, being able to walk with the aid of a cane and give lengthy interviews about his life to reporters. His only significant age-related ailment was his near-deafness, which required people to shout into his ear to communicate. He got up every morning around 5:30 AM, and read the newspaper with breakfast. In 2007, he had 18 grandchildren, and 22 great-grandchildren.

Vargas Pérez passed away on 20 August 2008 in San Juan, Tibás, San José Province, Costa Rica, at the age of 111 years, 328 days.

His age was firstly listed as pending validation by Latin American Supercentenarians (LAS) by an anonymous researcher, Stefan Maglov and James Roberts, and validated by LongeviQuest on 23 September 2026.

(at the age of 108)

(In 2004, at the age of 108)

@ale76 Congratulations to the validation team and the family of Mr. Vargas Pérez!

Well done to the validation team.

Mr Faustino Vargas Perez comfortably makes it into the top 100 oldest men ever.