from the article:
Retelling of the Flood Caused by the Mapocho River in the City of Santiago de Chile
“On June 16, 1783 the effects of torrential rains caused the river Mapocho in Santiago, Chile to flood its banks. At the time the small community of Carmelite nuns resided in their cloistered convent next to the river. The rains started in May, but became a deluge in early June and by the time of the great flood, it had poured for 209 hours straight. The nuns would have drowned, had it not been for some neighbors who broke a hole in one of the walls, leading twenty-eight women to safety. Sor Tadea de San Joaquín, a nun from the Carmelite Convent of San Rafael, retells their story in a 516-versed romance [ballad], wherein Sor Tadea affirms that it was God’s will that the nuns be saved by the three men (she does not leave out the ironic detail that they had to be sobornados (bribed).”
– Sarah E. Owens, Travels, Natural Disasters, and the Texts of Cloistered Nuns: A Case from Colonial Chile