Walter mercado lgbtq
Even if viewers are unfamiliar with Walter Mercado, the gender non-conforming, Puerto Rican astrologer, after seeing “Mucho Mucho Amor,” they will become fans. This entertaining documentary, premiering on Netflix July 8, showcases this irresistible, larger-than-life showman who became one of the most well-known psychics in the world and who imparted messages of faith, love, and peace.
The directors, Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch, trace this unconventional celebrity in a beautiful straightforward manner. Mercado was born in 1932 in the Puerto Rican countryside. He admittedly was “not like other boys.” His mother told him “being different is a gift,” and Mercado was, indeed, different. He gained some notoriety as a healer — “Walter of the Miracles,” he recounts entity called — after helping a near-dead bird approach back to life. Soon, people were flocking to him for healing.
Mercado’s popularity and fame really began to take shape when he was performing as an actor on a telenovela in the 1960s. When he was asked to do a segment about astrology, people immediately clamored for more. That quickly lead to “Walter, the Stars, and You,” a 1-hour program where Mercado read horo
The Puerto Rican astrologer and psychic Walter Mercado’s enormous accomplishment on Latinx and Latin American television was always tied to his baroque excess and gender non-conformity, to the way he mixed popular religiosity, Recent Age esoteric views, and over-the-top theatrical camp aesthetics to share an uplifting message centered on love and self-affirmation. He is a Puerto Rican transloca performer par excellence, that is to say, a bilingual, bicultural, queer, effeminate, and androgynous painter whose translocal experience experiences and serve reflected particular sensibilities and cultural styles; a gender non-conforming pioneer who never publicly self-identified as gay, but who negotiated the room of the “open secret” as a strategy to retain homophobia at bay. I analyze the Netflix documentary Mucho, Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado (2020) in dialogue and tension with other cultural productions, including YouTube videos such as “Walter Mercado Vintage Era,” Mercado’s books Beyond the Horizon: Visions of the New Millennium (1997) and El mundo secreto de Walter Mercado (2010), Noelia Quintero Herencia’s documentary Walter Mercado: Más allá de la astrología (2002), Fausto Fernós’s
January 19 and 21, 2024
Mason Exhibitions Arlington
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We all need a little help sometimes. Identity is confusing. Dating is Complicated. Some of us go to therapy. And some of us – delay until it gets bad enough that our dead abuela (who’s lookin Scorching, btw) sends three Puerto Rican ancestors/icons our way on Christmas Eve to get us assist on track by taking us on a tour of our past, exhibit, and future. It was just supposed to be three dates, but Walter has other plans for Zee. Walter Mercado presents: a queer Puerto Rican (not just) Christmas Carol is a gay subversion of the classic ‘Christmas Carol’ narrative, a refreshing holiday story about Puerto Rico, progress, gender, and accepting a helping hand from some unexpected ancestors. In subverting the classic literary narrative of Dickens’ Christmas Carol to tell the story of a Puerto Rican nonbinary protagonist and the Puerto Rican ‘ancestors’ who guide them, we are claiming a place within the theatre for a new type of classic, one that diverges from the traditional, largely alabaster , cis canon, especially when it comes to what we expect from a holiday sh
With ‘Mucho Mucho Amor,’ Walter Mercado Solidifies His LGBTQ Icon Status
Walter Mercado (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Growing up there were three things that for sure happened in my house: we watched telenovelas before, during, and after dinner (name one novela and we can probably get immersive into it), sang along to Juan Gabriel’s iconic songs (no, I wasn’t a singer, but with Juanga it’s about the lyrics and what they make you feel), and witnessed the spectacle of Walter Mercado’s horoscope readings. Yes, spectacle.
I’m a Libra. We’re ruled by the planet Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love. We adore adjust, beauty, and diplomacy. Making a decision will always be the bane of our existence. And that’s all I learned from Walter about Libras. Sometimes I relate to those mainstream notions of my zodiac sign, but most of the time I leave wondering if that’s really who I am.
Trying to define my persona was —and is still— an ongoing process. When I was a kid, it was definitely harder, but something clicked when I saw Walter Mercado for the first age on TV. I was around four or five. Univision’s Primer Impacto was on. On the tail end of the telecast,
Iconic Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado dies at age 87
(Photo by Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Television astrologer Walter Mercado, whose dramatic persona made him a star in Latin media and a cherished representative for gay people in most of the Spanish-speaking world, has died. He was 87.
Mercado was recognizable throughout Latin American for the melodrama of his daily horoscopes, delivered on internationally broadcast networks such as Univision with an exaggerated trilling of the “r″. He favored colorful brocaded capes and massive gemstone rings, which he flashed while pointing at viewers.
Mercado never publicly discussed his sexual orientation but his screen presence was a source of comfort for many people in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual communities throughout Latin American and Latin communities in the U.S., said Alex Fumero, a Los Angeles-based producer who has spent two years active on a documentary about him.
“This is a tradition that’s been dominated by machismo and homophobia for a very long time,” Fumero said in a phone interview. “He was really brave.”
Fumero said