BIOGRAPHY

Íñiguez Paz was born in Colima, Mexico, on 18 February 1916. Her father, a carpenter, and her mother, a housewife, along with their young children, had difficulties and dangers brought by the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) and the Cristero War (1926-1929). For this reason, the Iñiguez Paz family, sought a life in different places, such as Tecomán, Caxitlán, Chacalapa, and Callejones, finally settling in the San Francisco neighborhood of Colima City, Colima. She began her elementary education late, at the age of nine, completing only the first five years of basic education.

On an occasion, during the Cristero War, soldiers arrived in Chacalapa with the aim of capturing men to forcibly recruit them into the war effort. As their demands were not met, they proceeded to destroy the inhabitants’ homes. They made no exception with Mercedes’s home: they broke into her home, destroyed it, and set fire to it, showing no regard for the fact that a baby (her younger brother) was sleeping in his crib. The soldiers had prevented her mother from entering to rescue her son. However, Mercedes, being a small girl, managed to elude the soldiers, slipped between their legs, and with great skill, managed to pull her younger brother out of the burning home.

She married Alejandro Castellanos Núñez in December 1937, and from 1938 to 1962, they gave birth to ten children: Domingo, Carlos, Carmen (died in 1972 at 29), Refugio, Julio Alejandro, Salvador, Jorge (died in 1962 at 9), Daniel, Miguel, and Mercedes. Her husband Alejandro died in April 1982, after 44 years of marriage.

Around 2010, she began to lose her sight. On 22 November 2021, she suffered a fractured left femur in a fall. She underwent surgery to implant a prosthesis, but she was no longer able to walk and began living in her bed from that date on.

At the age 108, she was always cheerful and playful, giving an example of a happy life with enormous faith in God. However, at the age of 109, she lost her energy, her brilliance diminished, her appetite had almost disappeared, and she began to be unable to care for herself.

Íñiguez Paz currently lives in the city of Colima, Colima, Mexico, and is cared for with great care and love by her family.

RECOGNITION

Her age was verified by Gabriel Ainsworth and Fabrizio Villatoro, and validated by LongeviQuest on 15 March 2025.

ATTRIBUTION

GALLERY