Difunta Correa Shrine

Until very recently, Roman Catholicism was Argentina’s official faith, and it still permeates daily life. When the shepherd fails the flock, though, the people seek help from popular saints like the Difunta Correa—whose shrine draws upward of 100,000 Semana Santa pilgrims to the desert hamlet of Vallecito, about 60 kilometers east of San Juan. More than just a religious experience, it’s an economic force, and even nonbelievers will find plenty to contemplate in the mixture of the sacred and the profane.

According to legend, María Antonia Deolinda Correa died of thirst in the desert while following her conscript husband—a small land-owner—during the mid-19th-century civil wars. When passing muleteers found her body, though, her baby son was still alive, feeding at her breast. While it seems far-fetched that any infant could survive on milk from a lifeless body, the legend had such resonance among local folk that the waterless site became a spontaneous shrine. The Difunta (“Defunct,” as dead people are known in the countryside) became a popular “saint,” despite limited proof that she even existed.

In the 150-plus years since the Difunta first colonized the consciousness of poor sanjuaninos and other Argentines, millions have come to regard her as a miracle worker. She is not a saint, though, and at best the official church regards belief in her as superstition; at worst, it has denounced her as contrary to its dogma, and has even installed its own priest and built its own church to combat the heresy.

Their efforts have been futile. From its negligible origins as a solitary cross atop a knoll, the shrine has grown into a complex that includes hotels and a campground, restaurants, a police station, a post office, a school, souvenir shops, and even its own tourist office. There is also the bureaucracy of the Fundación Vallecito, the nonprofit entity that administers the site.

For queues of pilgrims, though, the goal is the chamber in which lies a prostrate image of the Difunta, her baby at her breast. To fulfill promises they have made, and to thank her for favors granted, some crawl the concrete steps on their backs. They leave an astonishing assortment of license plates, model cars and houses, photographs, and other personal items that signify their gratitude; the foundation, for its part, “recycles” many items to finance its activities (which include delivery of 2,000 liters of water daily from the town of Caucete).

Pilgrims visit the shrine all year. It’s most impressive on holidays like Easter, May Day, and Christmas, but events like mid-April’s gauchesco Cabalgata de la Fe (Ride of Faith) from San Juan and December’s Festival del Camionero (Trucker’s Festival) are increasingly important.

Writing in the 19th century, Domingo F. Sarmiento—himself a sanjuanino—expressed what the official church still privately believes about rural religious practices like the Difunta Correa:

Christianity exists . . . as a tradition which is perpetuated, but corrupted; colored by gross superstitions and unaided by instruction, rites, or convictions.

Believers, for their part, see no contradiction between their formal faith and their devotion to the Difunta. That devotion has spread throughout the republic, as shown in roadside shrines—some of them astonishingly elaborate—from the Bolivian border at La Quiaca to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. Their marker is the water-filled bottles left to slake her thirst, but there are also banknotes (from the hyper-inflationary past), low-value coins, and miscellaneous auto parts (truckers are among her most committed adherents).

It also bears mention that, while the Difunta remains the most widespread of popular religious figures, as measured by numbers of roadside shrines, she’s not the only one. Sites devoted to the Gaucho Antonio Gil, an unjustly executed “Robin Hood” figure from the Corrientes provincial town of Mercedes, are proliferating alongside the Difunta in the wake of Argentina’s economic and political implosion of late 2001.

The shrine has its own branch of the provincial tourist office; there is also an ostensibly official website (www.visitedifuntacorrea.com.ar).

Informally, pilgrims camp just about anywhere they like, but the shrine’s own Hotel Difunta Correa (tel. 0264/496-1018) has spartan rooms with private bath (electric showers) for US$5.50/8.50 s/d with breakfast. There’s plenty of parrillada, plus empanadas and similar snacks at any of several streetside comedores.

From San Juan, Empresa Vallecito has direct service to the shrine (US$1.50, one hour), but any other eastbound bus, toward cities like La Rioja or Córdoba, will stop at the shrine’s entrance.