MAITUM, Sarangani -- If her relatives are to be believed, she could be the world’s oldest living person hitherto -- at 129 years old.

Relatives of Katrina Cuaresma Sapal, who is said to be a native of Pangasinan but became a revered Muslim high princess by accident, allowed reporters to visit her in her sickbed last Monday to get a glimpse of the supposed oldest person on Earth. Maria Luz Cuaresma-Ermitanyo, a niece of Sapal designated as the family’s spokesperson, said that Sapal could be that old on account of age comparison to her dead father.

According to Ermitanyo, who states her birthday to be on June 13, 1932, her father Pio Cuaresma died at the age of 72 in 1953. If Pio Cuaresma would be alive to this date, he would be 123 years old. 'My father, who is a second cousin of my aunt [Sapal], told me that she was older than him by not more than six years,' she told MindaNews in Filipino. Respectfully called by her relatives as 'Bai Labi' or 'Dalu Mabi' (literally, 'high princess'), Sapal lives this long because she rarely eats meat or poultry products but mainly subsists on vegetables and fish, according to Ermitanyo, recalling her growing up years with Sapal.
Sapal, who has been in sick bed for about two months now, also loves to bait fish along the seashore but rarely takes a bath on the beach just a stone’s throw away from her house for reasons not known to the relatives.

Sapal’s eldest daughter, Fatima Sapal-Pangansayam, whose age relatives said could be 103, said her mother lived the life of a princess -- virtually does no work, 'not even wash our plates or clothes nor carry a pail of water,' because servants did it all for her.

Aside from Pangansayam, three other sisters are still alive, their ages not less than 55. They are Awad Sapal-Panangilan, the second child; Beng Sapal, the fourth; and Inda Sapal-Oda, the seventh. The high princess bore eight children in all. Sapal could not talk due to her illness that also render her deaf on the right ear and only her left eye can see images, said the relatives, who also declined suggestions for the high princess to be brought to a hospital for a thorough medical check up.

'All her life, she has not been admitted to a hospital,' Sapal’s relatives chorused.

At the time of the visit at her house in barangay Pinol here, Sapal was thin as bone, gently snoring in her bed dressed and treated like a princess by the people who love her. Just below the ceiling of the house made up of patched slabs, where Sapal’s bed is located, are colorful traditional Maguindanaon silky clothes hanging widely. ‘Snatched’

Ermitanyo said that her aunt, along with her three other siblings, arrived in the shores of Mindanao upon the arrival of the Americans. Based on her father’s account, Ermitanyo said that Sapal, shortly upon arrival in Kiamba municipality, then part of the undivided Cotabato empire, was snatched by a Muslim datu 'because of her beauty' at the tender age of 14.

That Muslim datu turned out to be Uto Sapal, who in a 1942 American document, was identified as the vice mayor of Kiamba town. (Maitum was carved out of Kiamba town and became a municipality only in May 7, 1959).

Ermitanyo said that Datu Sapal eventually married the maiden. Since then, she was referred to as a high princess. She was always surrounded by servants that even her children could not approach her without being called by their mother. Ermitanyo added they have no clear memories of the siblings of the high princess, who reportedly had a twin named Catalina, since they apparently parted ways long ago.

Purely testimonies

Pressed for documents that would prove the high princess’s age, Ermitanyo admitted they do not have any, saying they lost it owing to the series of massive evacuations in the 1970s when the government pursued a war against the Moro people in Mindanao. But Gemma Rebollido, a humanities professor at the Notre Dame of Dadiangas College, believed that Katrina Cuaresma Sapal could also be over 100 years old and probably the oldest living woman in the world today.

Tracing the genealogy of the Sapal family, Rebollido said that the high princess may have likely been born in 1882.

'One of the relatives told me that the high princess was 14 years old when Rizal was shot,' she said, referring to the national hero who was executed by the Spaniards in 1896 in Luneta. Given that testimony, the old lady, Rebollido computed, shall now be 122 years old. Elizabeth Palma-Gil, Maitum chief information officer, said the municipality has no existing records of Sapal that would prove her actual age. But whether Sapal is now 122 or 129 years old, she would still emerge as the oldest living person to date.

World record holders

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s oldest living woman is Ramona Trinidad Iglesias Jordan, at 114.

But the Cable News Network reported on its website (www.cnn.com) last June 1 that Jordan, an American, died last May 29 after a bout with pneumonia.

The world’s oldest living man, on the other hand, is Fred Hale Sr., who turned 113 years and 95 days on March 5, 2004, according to the Guinness website (www.guinnessworldrecords.com). Hale was born December 1, 1890.