postgres dies while doing vacuum analyze

Guys,

Just installed a new data base in my server and while running vacuum
analyze postgres dies with the following message:

[...]
NOTICE: Index pg_rewrite_oid_index: Pages 2; Tuples 16. CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec.
NOTICE: Index pg_rewrite_rulename_index: Pages 2; Tuples 16. CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec.
NOTICE: --Relation pg_toast_17058--
NOTICE: Pages 4: Changed 0, reaped 0, Empty 0, New 0; Tup 17: Vac 0, Keep/VTL 0/0, Crash 0, UnUsed 0, MinLen 219, MaxLen 2034; Re-using: Free/Avail. Space 0/0; EndEmpty/Avail. Pages 0/0. CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec.
NOTICE: Index pg_toast_17058_idx: Pages 2; Tuples 17. CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec.
NOTICE: Analyzing...
pqReadData() -- backend closed the channel unexpectedly.
This probably means the backend terminated abnormally
before or while processing the request.
The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: Failed.
!#

The postgres version is 7.1.2 and the data base was initialized with

$ LANG=es_MX /usr/bin/initdb -D /var/lib/pgsql/data -E latin1

It is running on Redhat Linux 7.1 i686 with 2.4.2-2 kernel.
Here is the back trace from gdb

(gdb) bt
#0 strcoll () at strcoll.c:229
#1 0x081348e7 in varstr_cmp () at eval.c:41
#2 0x0813493f in varstr_cmp () at eval.c:41
#3 0x08134b7c in text_gt () at eval.c:41
#4 0x08148ca2 in FunctionCall2 () at eval.c:41
#5 0x080b3b09 in analyze_rel () at eval.c:41
#6 0x080b3795 in analyze_rel () at eval.c:41
#7 0x080afa76 in vacuum () at eval.c:41
#8 0x080af9c7 in vacuum () at eval.c:41
#9 0x0810a3ca in ProcessUtility () at eval.c:41
#10 0x0810808b in pg_exec_query_string () at eval.c:41
#11 0x081091ce in PostgresMain () at eval.c:41
#12 0x080f208b in PostmasterMain () at eval.c:41
#13 0x080f1c45 in PostmasterMain () at eval.c:41
#14 0x080f0d0c in PostmasterMain () at eval.c:41
#15 0x080f0684 in PostmasterMain () at eval.c:41
#16 0x080cf3c8 in main () at eval.c:41
#17 0x401e2177 in __libc_start_main (main=0x80cf260 <main>, argc=3, ubp_av=0xbffffa7c, init=0x8065c20 <_init>,
fini=0x8154bb0 <_fini>, rtld_fini=0x4000e184 <_dl_fini>, stack_end=0xbffffa6c) at ../sysdeps/generic/libc-start.c:129
(gdb)

Seems like a problem with my locale settings. The
strange thing is that postgres dies while analyzing a system
table; however I'm able to vacuum my tables individually:

$ for t in `psql dep dep -c '\dt' -t -A | cut -d\| -f1`; do psql dep -c "vacuum analyze $t"; done

Any ideas?

best regards,
Manuel.