Cuna de lobos (English: Cradle of Wolves) is a Mexican telenovela produced by Carlos Téllez for Televisa, broadcast by Canal de las Estrellas (now known simply as Las Estrellas).^[1][2]

The series, 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.

Starring Gonzalo Vega, Diana Bracho, Alejandro Camacho and Rebecca Jones.

It tells the story of the powerful Larios family, owners of the Lar Creel pharmaceutical laboratories. Carlos Larios (Raúl Meraz) was married in second nuptials to the ambitious Catalina Creel (María Rubio) in order to give a mother to his young son, José Carlos. With Catalina, he had a second son: Alejandro.

When José Carlos was 6 years old, a terrible accident occurred: while he was playing with a spinning top, he gouged out his stepmother's eye. Since then, Catalina has been using colored patches to cover her glass eye and thus somehow alleviate the bitterness and guilt that José Carlos will carry with him throughout his life…

Much later, José Carlos (Gonzalo Vega) and Alejandro (Alejandro Camacho) have become adults and the latter has even married Vilma (Rebecca Jones), a woman with whom he is very much in love.

Carlos Larios discovers his wife's terrible secret: she never lost her eye and has lived her whole life tormenting his older son, José Carlos, so that the former would prefer Alejandro. Carlos decides to change his will and that same day he is poisoned by Catalina.

The will is very clear: the fortune of the laboratories will go to Carlos Larios' first grandchild; that is, the firstborn of José Carlos or Alejandro. Unfortunately, Vilma Larios is sterile.

At this moment, appears Leonora (Diana Bracho), a humble young woman, who falls at Alejandro's feet. The plan of the second Larios is to deceive her: he will marry her in secret, she will become pregnant and, once he has a child of his flesh and blood, he will make her disappear and give the child to Vilma, the only woman in the world he has ever loved. Meanwhile, Catalina takes it upon herself to destroy any love relationship José Carlos has.

Everything goes well for the evil Larios family. Leonora gives birth to a son who is delivered to Vilma. However, the first-mentioned is saved from dying at the hands of Alejandro Larios' henchmen and prepares her revenge: marry José Carlos Larios and recover her son from the very Cradle of Wolves where he now finds himself…

• Gonzalo Vega as José Carlos Larios
• Diana Bracho as Leonora Navarro
• Alejandro Camacho as Alejandro Larios
• Rebecca Jones as Vilma de la Fuente de Larios

• Carmen Montejo as Esperanza Mandrujano
• Lilia Aragón as Rosalía Mendoza
• Carlos Cámara as Reynaldo Gutiérrez
• Edna Bolkán as Paulina Pedrero
• Humberto Elizondo as Inspector Norberto Suárez
• Rosa María Bianchi as Bertha Moscoso
• Josefina Echánove as Elvia San Germán Viuda de Núñez
• Miguel Gómez Checa as Dr. Justo Terán
• Blanca Torres as Cleotilde de Terán
• Enrique Muñoz as Lawyer Curiel
• Luis Rivera as Mauricio Bermúdez
• Lourdes Canale as Carmen Alicia "Carmelita" Macías Acuña
• Julia Alfonzo as Lutecia
• Raúl Meraz as Carlos Larios
• María Rubio as Catalina Creel de Larios

The central character in Cuna de lobos is Leonora, played by Diana Bracho, who portrays the victim of the "wolves", only to "become" a "she-wolf" herself to seek revenge.

The main antagonist is matriarch Catalina Creel de Larios, 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.

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 that of her own husband, Carlos, (his mistake was realizing how evil she truly was) and to participate in the abduction of a child to ensure an inheritance.

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

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.

The first DVD of Cuna de lobos came out in 2002. It was a single-disc DVD that contained the entire telenovela edited down to a little over 230 minutes. A second DVD release came on March 8, 2006. While it expanded the telenovela 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 used to own the music rights after her deceased son Pedro Plascencia Salinas, producer of the music of the telenovela.

• Cuna de lobos at 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