SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Television astrologer Walter Mercado, whose flamboyant persona made him a star in Latin media and a cherished icon for homosexual individuals in a lot of the Spanish-speaking world, has died. He was 88.
Mercado was identified all through Latin American for the melodrama of his day by day horoscopes, delivered on internationally broadcast networks similar to Univision with an exaggerated trilling of the “r.” He favored colourful brocaded capes and large gemstone rings, which he flashed whereas pointing at viewers.
Mercado by no means publicly mentioned his sexual orientation however his display screen presence was a supply of consolation for many individuals in lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and transsexual communities all through Latin American and Latin communities within the U.S., stated Alex Fumero, a Los Angeles-based producer who has spent two years engaged on a documentary about him.
”This is a tradition that’s been dominated by machismo and homophobia for a really very long time,” Fumero stated in a cellphone interview. “He was really brave.”
Fumero stated Mercado’s silence on his orientation could have allowed him to maintain the adoration of LGBTQ followers and keep acceptance from conservative Latins who might have rejected an brazenly homosexual tv star.
Fumero stated one LGBTQ activist instructed him, “You don’t ask about what you can see,” including that he believes that was the angle held by many from Mercado’s technology.
”It’s the believable deniability that chauvinist or homophobic audiences want so as to give Walter the move that they wanted…to benefit from the message he was sending them,” Fumero stated.
Fumero stated he grew up watching Mercado and recalled his grandmother shushing him each time the astrologer delivered his predictions: “If Walter was on TV, everybody had to be quiet.”
Hospital spokeswoman Sofía Luquis instructed The Associated Press on Sunday that Mercado died from kidney failure on the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan late Saturday. He had been residing within the suburb of Cupey and had spent a number of days within the hospital earlier than his loss of life.
Mercado was born in Ponce, one in all Puerto Rico’s largest cities. Although he took college programs in pharmacology, psychology and pedagogy, he grew to become a well known dancer and theater actor and in addition appeared in a number of cleaning soap operas.
He labored briefly for TV stations primarily based within the U.S. Caribbean territory earlier than shifting to South Florida, the place he joined Univision.
Mercado, whose recognition started to soar within the 1980s, had a group of greater than 2,000 capes, together with some with feathers, treasured stones and distinctive embroideries.
His best-known catch phrase was “Above all, lots and lots of love.”
”He is a kind of individuals who used his movie star and energy to succeed in hundreds of thousands so as to encourage individuals with good messages,” stated Aida Levitan, who helped set up an exhibition in August on the HistoryMiami museum to honor Mercado.
She stated a whole bunch of individuals confirmed up and needed to fulfill him and take footage, and he agreed to all of it.
”It’s not simple on the age of 88 to face 500 individuals making an attempt to take footage. He by no means misplaced his cool,” Levitan recalled in a cellphone interview with the AP. “He used all his gifts and talents for the good of mankind, and that’s what makes him so appealing.”
Mercado, nevertheless, additionally confronted some authorized battles.
In 1998, he obtained in bother for endorsing alleged well being and wonder merchandise and was named in a class-action lawsuit that accused him of deceptive individuals into shopping for beads with supposed particular powers. The president of the jewellery firm, Unique Gems International Corp., was later sentenced to 14 years in jail for defrauding 16,000 individuals in a $90 million rip-off.
In October 2010, Mercado introduced he was altering his title to “Shanti Ananda.” That identical yr, he stopped capturing his section for the Univision Spanish-language TV channel. Months later, he started to ship day by day horoscopes by means of El Nuevo Herald newspaper in Miami.
Mercado was hospitalized in December…