By IANS,
Mexico City : A 106-year-old Mexican man received for the first time a birth certificate in the northern city of Saltillo, EFE reported Friday.
Mateo Ramirez Gonzalez was born in 1902 in Saltillo, which is in Coahuila state, which borders on the United States, the daily Reforma said Thursday.
The man was issued a birth certificate thanks to a programme to update the vital records of people with scanty economic resources, the paper said.
The news story was accompanied by a photograph of the moment when the elderly man, with a white beard, received the document from the hands of a Saltillo city official.
Not many years ago, in some Mexican rural communities it was a common practice for residents not to officially register their children with the government when they were born, both due to the lack of nearby government offices and to the fact that they did not know they were supposed to do that.