Cuna de lobos

Cuna de lobos
Genre	Telenovela
Format	telenovela, romance, drama
Created by	Carlos Olmos
Developed by	Carlos Olmos
Directed by	Carlos Téllez Antonio Acevedo
Starring	María Rubio Gonzalo Vega Diana Bracho Alejandro Camacho
Theme music composer	Pedro Plascencia Salinas
Country of origin	Mexico
Language(s)	Spanish
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	85 (1h) 170 (30 min)
Production
Producer(s)	Carlos Téllez
Camera setup	Carlos S. Zúñiga
Running time	45 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Canal de las Estrellas
Picture format	Color
Original run	October 6, 1986 – May 22, 1987
Chronology
Preceded by	de Pura Sangre
Followed by	Victoria (1987)
External links
Website

Cuna de lobos (Den of wolves) is a Mexican soap opera produced by Televisa and broadcast by Canal de las Estrellas in 1986 to 1987. The serial, about the struggle for power within a wealthy Mexican dynasty, was enormously popular in its native Mexico. It was also a hit in several foreign countries, including the United States, Germany and Australia.

Profile

The centrall character in Cuna de lobos is matriarch Catalina Creel, played by actress María Rubio, a villainess in the grand dramatic tradition of Dynasty's Alexis Carrington, Dallas' J.R. Ewing, or Knots Landing's Abby Cunningham.

The main character is Leonora, played by Diana Bracho, who portrays the victim of the "wolves", only to "become" a "wolf" herself to seek revenge.

Catalina's unnatural devotion to her eldest son caused her conceal a healthy eye behind the lie of blindness, commit a series of murders beginning with her own husband, Carlos (his crime was realizing how truly evil she was), and to participate in the abduction of a child to ensure her son's inheritance was confirmed.

Such is the impact of her performance, that soap opera's villainess take her as a role model, and when a program parodies a soap opera, the main villain is usually based on her.

Popularity

Cuna de lobos was so popular in its native country that on the night of the final broadcast, the streets of Mexico City - infamously choked with traffic - were deserted as the locals were in their homes glued to their TV screens. It has been re-screened several times in the United States and Australia in recent years. A remake has been in talks for several years, with one finally surfacing in 2010.

Other versions

The storyline of Cuna de lobos is somewhat similar to the story of the movie "The Anniversary" (1968), starring Bette Davis.

There is a version of Cuna de lobos produced in Spain (2002), called La Verdad de Laura, with Mónica Estarreado, Mariano Alameda and Mirtha Ibarra.

Por Derecho de Sangre is a 2011 series version of Cuna de lobos under the production of Salvador Mejia Alejandre, starring William Levy y Danna Garcia. Rebecca Jones as the new Catalina Creel.

Awards

The Best Soap Opera of the Year", TVyNovelas Award in 1987. In 2006 TvyNovelas named it the best telenovela ever^{[citation needed]}.

Cast

Gonzalo Vega as José Carlos Larios Creel Diana Bracho as Leonora Navarro de Larios Alejandro Camacho as Alejandro Larios Creel Rebecca Jones as Vilma De la Fuente de Larios Maria Rubio as Catalina Creel de Larios Roberto Vander as Mr. Julio Sifuentes Margarita Isabel as Mrs. Sifuentes Carmen Montejo as Esperanza Mandujano Rosa María Bianchi as Bertha Moscoso Carlos Cámara as Reinaldo Gutiérrez Enrique Muñoz as Lic. Curiel Lilia Aragón as Rosalía Mendoza Angelica Aragón as Amelia Larios Josefina Echánove as Elvia Humberto Elizondo as Inspector Suárez Magda Karina as Lucero Julia Alfonzo as Camarera Lourdes Canale as Carmelita Ramón Menéndez as Dr. Frank Zindel José Ángel Espinosa "Ferrusquilla" as Don Braulio Navarro Blanca Torres as Clotilde Miguel Gómez Checa as Doctor Augusto Terán Edna Bolkan as Paulina

Carlos Pouillot as Edgar De la Fuente Mercedes Pascual as Olga De la Fuente Eduardo Alcántara as Melquiades Ana Bertha Espín as Mayra Luis Rivera as Mauricio Enrique Hidalgo as Esteban Gamboa Humberto Valdepeña as Doctor Mendiola Maricruz Nájera as Gutiérrez widow Ricardo Ledezma as Pancho Wally Barrón as Comandante Luna Carmen Amezcua as Camarera Carlos Bonavides as Leonardo Sánchez Gerardo Mayol as Gómez Oralia Olvera as Rocío Edmundo Baraona as Trejo Humberto Klein Jorge Santos Emilio Guerrero Enrique Nuñez Santiago Gil Ontiveros René Gonzáles Mauricio Sandoval Jorge Fegan as Escudero

Plot

Carlos Larios, the owner of the international pharmaceutical company Lar-Creel informs Catalina Creel, his wife, that he's become privy to the secret she has concealed for many years, and that he intends to expose her and change his will. To protect such a secret and to stop him from changing the will, she poisons Carlos' orange juice, which he drinks. Ignorant of what he's just ingested Larios drives off to work. Little does he know that his drive will have him cross paths with Leonora Navarro (Diana Bracho), when Larios suffers a fatal heart attack, sending his vehicle through the office building where she works. Leonora contacts Larios' son Alejandro (Alejandro Camacho) and returns his father's wallet. In gratitude they decide to keep in touch.

With Larios dead, the will gets revealed: it stipulates that whichever of his sons - Alejandro (Alejandro Camacho) or José Carlos (Gonzalo Vega) - produces an heir first shall inherit control of Lar-Creel and its fortune. Catalina is privately pushing for her son Alejandro, who is married, to be the first instead of her stepson José Carlos whom she maintains at bay of the family business. She exploits Jose Carlos' weak nature through guilt (by reminding him it's his fault she wears an eye-patch - which is the heart of the secret Larios was about to disclose) and by making him totally dependent on her paying off his debts. At the same time Catalina fends off a young woman he has begun to date and in a series of events she manages to frame him for the murder of a man who'd been sending threats to the Larios' house, a murder she committed dressed in a blond wig and dark overcoat.

What Catalina ignores is that Alejandro's wife Vilma (Rebecca Jones) is sterile. Alejandro, fully aware of the family tradition, knows Catalina will force him to divorce Vilma. Divided by his devotion for Vilma and his need to control the family business, he decides to contact Leonora clandestinely while having Vilma fake a pregnancy. Esperanza (Carmen Montejo), Leonora's godmother, is wary, but allows Leonora to get involved with him when he wins her over. The relationship deepens, but when Leonora becomes pregnant and Catalina discovers Vilma's fake pregnancy, the stakes are raised. In a bold move to save his marriage Alejandro reveals to Catalina what he's been doing on his own which prompts Catalina to take matters into her own hands: she has Alejandro "marry" Leonora with the intention of taking the child once it's born. Esperanza is unable to warn Leonora of the danger she faces because she suffers a stroke, is rendered mute, and winds up in a nursing home paid for by Catalina.

It seems Leonora is passively becoming an unwilling patsy. She has now been taken to a remote clinic also paid by Catalina, and there she awaits going into labor as she gets careful medical attention from Dr. Zindel and his accomplice Rosalía. Once the baby is born, Alejandro and Vilma drive off. Catalina orders Dr. Zindel to kill Leonora so as to remove evidence. Rosalia is the one to do the task, but fails: Leonora escapes into the night, narrowly avoiding getting attacked by guard dogs, and gets picked up by a woman who drives her back to Mexico City where she receives medical attention, and slowly she regains her sanity, her life, and her determination to get her son back. She begins following the Larios' every movements and showing up at events. However, once she sets her sights on José Carlos, who's been released from jail, she uses him to get into the Larios' house by having him marry her and introduce him as his wife. It's there where Leonora truly tightens her grip on the Larios family.

From here on, subplots come into play at this time. Bertha Moscoso, Catalina's secretary, no longer wanting to be privy to her machinations, has found herself at the same clinic where Leonora once stayed. Dr. Zindel tries to rape her, but Rosalia's jealousy burns the clinic down and shows up at the Larios' house demanding help from Catalina who instead frames her for her crimes in a vicious turn of events by dressing her in the disguise she used for her murders. Bertha later shows up, also in disguise, and with the help of a friend (and because she has insider information on the Larios' dirty laundry which she takes to the police investigating the murders that seem to tie themselves to the Larios family) is able to go even further than Leonora in hurting the Larios, not without nearly escaping death by Catalina who tracks her down. It's after this showdown between Bertha and Catalina where José Carlos becomes aware that all this time he'd been duped by her - he'd never been responsible for maiming Catalina's eye and her hold on him disappears.

Not so with Alejandro: discovering Catalina killed his father by Leonora's unwavering proof (having been there when he died) destroys him emotionally. Events take a turn for the worse when Vilma gets stomach cancer which spreads rapidly. Vilma has a change of heart and gives Edgar, Leonora's son, back to her. As Alejandro prepares to fly Vilma to a medical facility in the family jet (which Catalina, believing José Carlos and Leonora were going to fly had rigged to malfunction) the plane explodes in mid-flight. Catalina receives news that her son is dead. At this time the police are narrowing in on Catalina, her crimes exposed. She, in turn, decides to commit suicide by drinking the same poison she gave her husband, dressed in the blond wig and overcoat she used so many times.

5 years later, Leonora's two sons stumble upon the eye patches Catalina wore so many times, and the quote from Leonora's oldest son Edgar, now named Braulio, who hasn't accepted his true mother and misses Alejandro and Vilma - "I'm not Braulio. I'm little Edgar" raised the question that this story might have had a sequel. However, producer Carlos Téllez died in 1994 and writer Carlos Olmos died in 2003, and a sequel was not made by them.

DVD

The first DVD of Cuna de lobos came out in 2002. It was a single-disc DVD that contained the entire novela edited down to a little over 230 minutes. A second DVD release came on March 8th, 2007. While it expanded the novela to over 11 hours played on three DVDs, the original instrumental music and soundtrack had been erased and substituted by new music. According to Televisa, this was due to a disagreement with Mexican actress and producer Carmen Salinas, who now owns the music rights after her deceased son Pedro Plascencia Salinas, producer of the music of the novela.

External links

• Cuna de Lobos
• Cuna de Lobos at the Telenovela Database.
• Cuna de lobos at the Internet Movie Database
• Beyond soap - BBC embraces villains, plot twists and Latin style of telenovela at The Guardian contains a significant mention of Cuna de Lobos

References