Cuna de lobos
Cuna de Lobos (English title: Cradle of Wolves) is a Mexican telenovela produced by Carlos Téllez for Televisa in 1986.[1][2] 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 Brazil, the United States, Germany and Australia.
| Cuna de lobos | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Telenovela |
| Created by | Carlos Olmos |
| Directed by | Carlos Téllez |
| Creative director(s) | Javier Terrazas |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Pedro Plascencia |
| Country of origin | Mexico |
| Original language(s) | Spanish |
| No. of episodes | 170 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Carlos Téllez |
| Producer(s) | Rubén Piña |
| Production company(s) | Televisa |
| Release | |
| Original network | Canal de las Estrellas |
| Original release | October 13, 1986 – June 5, 1987 |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Monte Calvario |
| Followed by | El precio de la fama |
Diana Bracho and Gonzalo Vega are the main characters, while María Rubio is the main antagonist in her role as Catalina Creel. Alejandro Camacho and Rebecca Jones are also antagonists.
Synopsis
Catalina Creel (María Rubio), has an unconditional love for her son Alejando (Alejandro Camacho) and because of him, Catalina is willing to kill even her husband Carlos Larios (Raúl Meraz) and anyone who stands in his way, trying to hinder the destiny of the dynasty. Not so with Jose Carlos Larios (Gonzalo Vega), whom she blames deceptively for having burst an eye with a peg-top in his childhood, in revenge of his rejections, since Catalina was not his true mother. She invents this lie mainly to harass Jose Carlos and secondly to push her husband Carlos to get angry with Jose Carlos and disinherit him, so he turns his interest in expanding the dynasty only in his son Alejandro.
Carlos discovers Catalina without the patch she uses to cover her crippled eye and decides to tell everyone about the deceivement, change his will in favor of Jose Carlos and divorce her. But before that, Catalina poisons him.
Vilma (Rebecca Jones), Alejandro's wife, is sterile and unable to give Alejandro a son, so she adds to Alejandro's plan to steal the son from a woman named Leonora (Diana Bracho), whom he cheated using the pretext that he was in love with her.
Leonora starts a revenge against Catalina, Alejandro and Vilma through Jose Carlos, whom she takes advantage to enter the house, using the fact that he is in love with her, although in the end, she falls in love with him seriously.
Cast
| Actor | Character | Description |
|---|---|---|
| María Rubio | Catalina Creel de Larios † | Main villain - serial killer, killed 7 people, commits suicide |
| Gonzalo Vega | José Carlos Larios Creel | |
| Diana Bracho | Leonora Navarro de Larios | |
| Alejandro Camacho | Alejandro Larios Creel † | Villain, killed by Catalina |
| Rebecca Jones | Vilma de la Fuente de Larios † | Villain, killed by Catalina |
| Roberto Vander | Mr. Julio Sifuentes | |
| Raúl Meraz | Don Carlos Larios † | Killed by Catalina |
| Margarita Isabel | Elena de Cifuentes | |
| Carmen Montejo | Esperanza Mandujano | |
| Rosa María Bianchi | Bertha Moscoso/Michelle Albán | |
| Carlos Cámara | Reynaldo Gutiérrez † | Killed by Catalina |
| Enrique Muñoz | Captain Gudini | |
| Lilia Aragón | Rosalía Mendoza † | Villain, killed by police |
| Angelica Aragón | Amelia Larios | |
| Josefina Echánove | Elvia San Germán Vda. de Núñez | |
| Humberto Elizondo | Inspector Norberto Suárez † | Killed by Catalina |
| Magda Karina | Lucero Espejel † | Killed by Catalina |
| Julia Alfonzo | Camarera | |
| Lourdes Canale | Carmen Alicia Macías Acuña "Carmelita" | |
| Ramón Menéndez | Dr. Frank Syndell † | Killed by Rosalia |
| José Ángel Espinosa "Ferrusquilla" | Don Braulio Navarro | |
| Blanca Torres | Cleotilde | |
| Miguel Gómez Checa | Doctor Augusto Terán | |
| Edna Bolkan | Paulina Pedrero | |
| Carlos Pouillot | Edgar de la Fuente | |
| Mercedes Pascual | Olga Van Der Sandt de de la Fuente | |
| Eduardo Alcántara | Melquiades | |
| Ana Bertha Espín | Mayra | |
| Luis Rivera | Mauricio | |
| Enrique Hidalgo | Esteban Gamboa | |
| Humberto Valdepeña | Doctor Mendiola | |
| Maricruz Nájera | Gutiérrez's widow | |
| Ricardo Ledezma | Pancho | |
| Wally Barrón | Comandante Luna | |
| Carmen Amezcua | Camarera | |
| Carlos Bonavides | Leonardo Sánchez | |
| Gerardo Mayol | Gómez | |
| Oralia Olvera | Rocío | |
| Edmundo Baraona | Trejo | |
| Humberto Klein | ||
| Jorge Santos | Police Inspector | |
| Emilio Guerrero | ||
| Enrique Nuñez | ||
| Santiago Gil Ontiveros | Edgar Larios de la Fuente/Braulio Larios Navarro | |
| René Gonzáles | ||
| Mauricio Sandoval | ||
| Jorge Fegan | Escudero † | Killed by Catalina |
Awards
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | 5th TVyNovelas Awards | Best Telenovela of the Year | Carlos Téllez | Won |
| Best Actress | Diana Bracho | |||
| Best Actor | Gonzalo Vega | |||
| Best Antagonist Actress | María Rubio | |||
| Lilia Aragón | Nominated | |||
| Best Antagonist Actor | Alejandro Camacho | Won | ||
| Best Leading Actress | María Rubio | |||
| Carmen Montejo | Nominated | |||
| Best Female Revelation | Rosa María Bianchi | |||
| Best Male Revelation | Humberto Elizondo | |||
| Best Original Story or Adaptation | Carlos Olmos | Won | ||
| Best Direction | Carlos Téllez Antonio Acevedo |
Profile
The central character in Cuna de lobos is matriarch Catalina Creel, played by actress María Rubio, a villain 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 only son caused her to 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 villain 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 2019.
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 8, 2006. 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.
References
- "25 AÑOS DE `CUNA DE LOBOS" (in Spanish). vanguardia.com.mx. Archived from the original on September 26, 2015. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
- "Cuna de Lobos in Mexican Telenovela Database" (in Spanish). alma-latina.net. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
External links
- Cuna de lobos on IMDb
- Cuna de Lobos
- Beyond soap - BBC embraces villains, plot twists and Latin style of telenovela at The Guardian contains a significant mention of Cuna de Lobos