Walter Mercado -Mucho Mucho Amor (Image Kino Lorber, Netflix) 
Astrology has a reputation for being harmless. Many secular communities see it as playful fun, and religious communities put up with it since it doesn’t seem to pose a significant threat to their power, but this might show a lack of foresight on both parts. This weekend we’re watching a documentary about an astrological icon who preached love and kindness, skyrocketed support in astrology, influenced the political decisions of a former US President, and was implicated in the telephonic scamming of millions of poor and desperate people.
width="853" height="480" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"> Mucho Mucho Amor
Imagine fusing David Bowie, Benicio Del Toro and your grandmother. If you’re having trouble picturing this person then you’ve probably never heard of Walter Mercado, a flamboyant androgynous Puerto Rican astrologer and TV personality who died in November of 2019.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/mercado4.jpg "Walter Mercado - Mucho Mucho Amor (Image Kino Lorber, Netflix)")
Mercado was shrouded in mysticism his entire life. As a young child, his mother passed him off as a spiritual healer. Locals in his rural Puerto Rican village would come to him for good luck. As a young adult he dabbled in dance and starred in tella novellas, but by the late Sixties, Walter Mercado was hosting one of the most popular television shows in Puerto Rico.
During Mercado’s shows, he would perform motivational horoscopes while dressed in extravagant and beautiful jewellery, makeup, and a cape; and at the end of each episode he famously signed off with a dramatic “mucho mucho amor!”. (lots and lots of love!) He was essentially a motivational speaker who spoke for the universe, the self-ordained “prophet of the new age”. There was nothing like him on television at the time and he quickly amassed a colossal following.
Mercado might be one of the most benevolent cult leaders in history. He was not in it for the money, and he certainly was not in it for astrology – he saw astrology as a means towards two ends: influencing people to watch his shows, and influencing people to be good to one another. “I want to mesmerise people… the people love all that kind of stupid things. So I used the stupid things, to teach, to help, to give”.
Mercado openly admitted that his horoscopes were improvised. He would sometimes record up to 10 episodes in a single weekend, each of which would be released as if they were current. But his viewers were either ignorant of that, or simply didn’t mind. What they really wanted was encouragement. In all his content, he never said anything negative. Never. He was the news broadcaster we all wish existed, the messenger who only ever has good news.
More important than the thumb-sucked reassurance he gave people on his show was what he meant to the LGBTQ+ community.
“Walter was very beloved and very much a part of the culture, but he would also get folded into gay jokes. He was embraced and othered at the same time.” Here was an idiosyncratic gender non-conforming asexual person, thriving within a deeply homophobic culture. He was a beacon of hope.
The other reason people tuned into Walter Mercado was for the glamorous outfits. People are sometimes impressionable. They don’t always care about what’s real, they care about what’s fun and uplifting, and Mercado himself was unashamed of the superficial interest of his support base. “He had his look. So did Elvis, so did Liberace. So did the Pope. If it doesn’t look good, we’re not even going to listen.” That is a quote from Bill Bakula, the man responsible for the end of Walter Mercado.
Bakula was Mercado’s agent. He wasn’t interested in astrology or kitsch fashion, what he was interested in was Walter Mercado’s humongous following. Through Mercado’s brand, Bakula is responsible for the largest telephonic psychic service scam of all time, which capitalised mostly off of poor and desperate people in Latino communities. Bakula’s thirst for a buck was also Mercado’s downfall – he managed to convince Mercado into literally signing his name away.
Before you watch Mucho Mucho Amor, you should watch the episode of Explained on Astrology.
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