Werewolves in Argentina

---

Geo: -34.6118, -58.4173

In the UK, if there is a newspaper story about someone having seven children, you can bet it's a dose of Daily Mail "terrible mother sponges off the state" bile. However, in Argentina, it's more likely to be a story about preventing a child from becoming a werewolf.

The lobizon, or lobison, is a legend in Argentina that states that the seventh son of a family (seventh of seven boys in a row, with no girls in-between) would become a werewolf. This wolf will then roam the mountains and hills, awaiting interaction with another human. If the human survives the attack, they become a lobizon as well.

There are reports that this belief in Argentina was so prevalent in the early 1900s that seventh sons were being killed or abandoned. To stop this from happening, a law was introduced that says that the Argentinean president would become the godparent of all seventh sons, and that these children would also receive a gold medal at their baptism and a scholarship for their education, up to and including university. The law and these arrangements are still in place today.

There have been a few changes over the years. Within the Casa Rosada (literally “the Pink House”, the Argentinean version of the US White House), there is now a Departamento de Padrinazgos Presidenciales (Department of Presidential Godparenting), even if the work of this government department was suspended in the early noughties because, according to the “La Nación” newspaper, there was a shortage of money to pay for the gold medals as a result of the country's crisis.

The werewolf law now applies to the seventh child, whether male or female, although, in a country in which abortion is still illegal, I am not sure that addressing this particular anomaly in reproductive rights was really a priority.

Apparently, some presidents, on being newly elected, also receive a sudden flourish of godparent applications from those parents seven times over who didn't fancy having a tyrant in the godparent role and were awaiting a kinder, more progressive post-holder.

In line with the deep political cynicism of Argentina, I have also found reports that the “Padrino” (“Godfather”😉 law in 1907 was really a way of bribing people to populate and strengthen Argentina. Presidents have also had an alleged tendency to be much more likely to attend, in person, the baptisms of their soon-to-be-godchildren around election time.

Today I watched the film “Nazareno Cruz y el lobo” ("Nazareno Cruz and the wolf"😉, an Argentinean classic, which I was far too excited to find in a nearby DVD shop. The “Nazareno Cruz” DVD case doesn't say that the film comes with Spanish subtitles (essential if I am to have a hope of understanding films in Spanish, especially when they have dodgy sound quality issues going on), but fortunately it does. Released in 1975, this was the most successful Argentinean film at the box office for 35 years, until “El secreto de sus ojos” won an Oscar earlier this year (2010) and stole the crown.

“Nazareno Cruz” tells the story of what happens to a boy whose father and six brothers have left town, leaving both him and his mother to cope with the prospect of his becoming a werewolf. The film is supersaturated with dodgy 1970s production values – most evident in the long soft-focus hair-flicking scenes, set to the tune of “Soleado” (which I only knew as the backing track to Johnny Mathis' “When a child is born”😉. If you're up to it, you can take a look at some screenshots from the film here and get a feel for what I mean. The gender politics are just as antiquated – you should expect it to be full of “blond woman as sex object”, “old woman as witch”, and “single mother as hysteric” archetypes.

However, there is something a little gripping about the film. Maybe, for me, it was the fact that the main actor, Juan José Camero, has a kind of hypnotic sexiness; imagine an Argentinean Michael Landon, but without the sickly “Highway to Heaven”/“Little House on the Prairie” sweetness and with a little more wolfiness. The film's ending is positively Shakespearean in its swirling, melodramatic intensity.

A musical version of “Nazareno Cruz y el lobo” has been produced recently, and it went on tour in Argentina a couple of months' ago. I am not entirely sure why, but I would have really liked to have seen it. I'll keep an eye out for new productions, and, in the meantime, if I see any werewolves around Buenos Aires, I'll be sure to post pics.

---