Talk:Maria Olivia da Silva
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[edit] Rumor??
This article is ridiculous! It says that she became the oldest person alive after the death of someone a decade younger than she is! Can anyone check to see whether this is correct?? Georgia guy 00:51, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] from VfD
On 5 Mar 2005, this article was nominated for deletion. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Maria Olivia da Silva for a record of the discussion. This discussion also raised concerns which have not yet been fully addressed concerning:
- the verifiability of the article's content
- the copyright status of the accompanying picture
- whether this article would be a better fit for the WikiNews project.
[edit] Possibilities
Hi. Indeed, my research indicates that her condition as a 125 year-old has not been validated internationally. The RankBrasil website is somewhat misleading in that regard, which led me to include her in the listing of the Supercentenarian article. It's been removed now, and given the controversy, I see no reason to re-add the name there.
But about her, there are a couple of things I can say that might help in sorting this out. First, she possesses an official birth certificate and an official Brazilian identity card, both indicating her birthdate as being February 28, 1880. Well, those documents are not issued lightly, no one can get an id card with whaterver birthdate they desire. In fact, it is interconnected: in order to get an id card in Brazil, one must present to the authorities one's birth certificate. A birth certificate may be issued by the proper authorities at any time, but it contains only the official information recorded in official databanks. Therefore, if this lady has a birth certificate and an id card that state her birthdate as February 28, 1880, that would mean that the Brazilian government recognizes her birthdate (and age, obviously) as being that.
This is also connected to something else: the women who preceded her as "oldest Brazilian", I'm almost positive, had all been born slaves (black women born prior to 1888), and slaves did not receive proper documentation, neither at birth nor ever, so these women really had no official record of their birthdates. This is not the case of ms. Maria Olivia da Silva. Although she was born prior to 1888, she was born a free woman, and thus probably was registered properly by her parents. This means that some mouldy document archived somewhere is an official record of the time of her birth.
And why hasn't she sought recognition before? And what about her 50-something year-old son? Well, this lady lives in a rural area, so 1)she probably never thought that her age had any significance, until someone stumbled upon her records and decided to seek recognition on her behalf; 2)Her isolation and low profile certainly made it more difficult for people from the "outside world" to take notice of her really long existence. And the son: in Brazilian rural areas, it is rather common for people to just take children in and raise them as their own. The government never even hears about it. That's probably what happened with this son of hers: she took him in and raised him, without any proper, official adoption procedure. In this case, there's no issue about the fact that an elderly woman would never be given custody of a child.
I hope this is of any help. Please notice that I was speculating to a great extent, but within the realistic scenario of Brazil. Naturally, most of what I said cannot go into the article, unless if to provide some guidance as to the probability of her claim being legitimate. In any case, this could help editors get a better footing in this entire situation. At your disposal for any further explanation, Redux 04:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
