I want to thank all respondents.
Whereas Emacs directs the use of `eval` for minor modes, I got befuddled by this suggestion, as Emacs itself when describing modes using C-h m in the LaTeX buffer did not show "correlate I/O" as a mode at all, in my present system the minor modes presented are: Auto-Fill Auto-Save Cdlatex Flyspell Font-Lock Reftex, also similar consult via the mouse-3 gets to the same information, i. e., TeX-source-correlate-mode not a minor mode, albeit it appears as a sub-sub menu of the major mode AUCTeX.
Also in no point of the voluminous AUCTeX manual (info) there was mention to correlate be a minor mode.
On the other hand, Emacs was happy when I created a small file from scratch (since the skeleton with all the parameters, local variables comes from years) and using M-x add-file-local-variable it put the corresponding var happily, although I concede we should not expect any level of critique from Emacs engine.
As the suggestion didn't solve the problem, a more thorough troubleshoot was done with a friend in a paired programmer fashion, a la Agile, and it was noticed that whereas the custom icons for buttons in menu, fontifying OK, and the keyboard commands worked as expected C-c C-v for viewing, etc., in the modeline the mode was showing "Fundamental" instead of the "LaTeX/PS".
A further digging into the matter did show that during one of the package updates, one of the minor mode packages required due to a hook added in my .init file (cdlatex).
Once this was solved, and LaTeX/PS came back to the modeline, Emacs now during the loading of the .tex asks about local variables, and once enabled the system works as expected.
Home this report can be of use for the community of AUCTeX users.
Again, thanks for the help and regards to all users and the developer team.