The shrine of the Difunta Correa — Vallecito

OVERVIEW

The Difunta Correa ('the Deceased Correa') is a figure of folk Catholicism in Argentina and Chile whose devotees come mostly from the working classes. Her shrine is at the small town of Vallecito, 63 km from the city of San Juan and 1,160 km from Buenos Aires, and miracles have been claimed there since its origins around 1840.

HISTORY

The legend: around 1840, during the civil wars, Deolinda Correa's husband was forcibly recruited, fell ill and was abandoned by the montoneras. Following their tracks across the desert of San Juan with her baby, she ran out of water and died; gauchos driving cattle found her days later with the child still alive, feeding from her 'miraculously' ever-full breast, buried her at what is now Vallecito and took the child with them. In May 2026 the Archdiocese of San Juan, long suspicious of the cult, announced with the National University of San Juan an investigation into whether she existed; researchers have found an 1865 advertisement in the newspaper El Zonda by a Baudilio Bustos Correa — the name tradition gives the surviving child.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Her devotees hold that she works miracles and intercedes for the living, the child's survival being the first. Cattle drivers and then truck drivers carried her devotion along the roads of the country.

VISITING

The shrine is at Vallecito, 63 km from San Juan. The pin marks the shrine area on Ruta Nacional 141.