The lobizón

The lobizón, or luisón, is the werewolf of Paraguayan and Argentine folklore, said to be the seventh son in a row. In Argentina the president's godchildren, a custom for seventh sons, have had their schooling paid by law since 1974.

Wikipedia lists the Luison (Luisón or Lobizón in Spanish, Luisõ in Paraguayan Guaraní) among Paraguay's seven mythical beasts, born the last of the seven sons of Tau and Kerana. Argentina knows the myth too, and there it holds that in a family of seven sons, the last will become a luisón. Juan B. Ambrosetti recorded the same belief in 1917 under the name lobisome. He wrote that being one is the unavoidable fate of the seventh son in an unbroken line, and that a seventh daughter in a row becomes a witch instead.

Argentina also has a custom in which the president becomes godparent to a seventh son. La Nación (2026) says the rule popularly called the ley del lobizón comes from Law 20.843, promulgated by María Estela Martínez de Perón in 1974. It requires the national state to pay for the godchildren's primary, secondary and university studies from general revenue. La Nación reports that an opposition deputy and the government are both seeking to repeal it.

The nickname ties the law to the werewolf story. Smithsonian Magazine (2014) cites a historian who traces the custom itself to 1907. That year a Volga German couple, emigrants from south-eastern Russia, went to José Figueroa Alcorta, then president, and asked him to stand as godfather to the couple's seventh boy.