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)

As a Brazilian myself, and a teacher o Brazilian history I think I can provide some enlightening information on this subject. In the first place, noboby in Brazil had birth or marriage certificates before 1875 because Brazil had an agreement with the Catholic Church and recognized de jure whatever registration the Church kept on its parishes. So, people born before 1875 did only have "certificates of baptism" (batistério or comprovante de batismo in Portuguese). After 1875 the first registering offices were created (at first only in provincial capitals and other major cities) to provide birth certificates for the rich, white population. In 1888, after the end of slavery, birth registration was mandated for every person born in Brazil, but this does not mean that everyone was indeed registered: we still have an estimated figure of about 3,000,000 people in Brazil without birth certificate, and I don't mean indians (who don't need them, btw). The shame here is that, under Brazilian law, you don't exist and have no right at all if you don't have a birth certificate. You can't attend school, you can't get a formal job, you can't buy or sell, you can't own real estate, you can't even walk about freely: if you are not a certified Brazilian citizen you don't even have the right to be in Brazil for that matter. Of course government officials don't expel unregistered people when they get across them (instead they investigate if they are really Brazilians and, if so, provide them with free documents).

But this all amounts to one important thing: Maria Olívia was probably never registered when she was born . This was common until not long ago, my mother, for instance was registered months after her birth and my grandaddy -- shame on him -- could not remember the correct birth date, so my mother officially was born on October 14th, though the family remembers well that it was September 15th. Being a very poor person from a very backward part of the country means that she probably lived years, perhaps decades, without registration (if she is illiterate it adds evidence to this). Her birth certificate was probably issued on her behalf when some government official got wind of her, and the date on it was probably kindly asked to her and those who knew her. It can be true, but can be a mere figment of imagination. She can be even older than that and we may not ever know. jggouvea 00:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I am a brazilian too, and I think that she probably is about 80-90 years old. Since people than old can have similar appareance to supercentenarians.--189.6.238.249 18:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)