Flamboyant Puerto Rican astrologer and TV personality Walter Mercado has died at age 88.
FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2012 file photo, Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado, also known as Shanti Ananda, gives a press conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Mercado, a flamboyant astrologer and television personality whose daily TV appearances entertained many across Latin America for more than a decade, died on Nov. 26.
Hospital spokeswoman Sofía Luquis told The Associated Press on Sunday that Mercado died from kidney failure at the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan late Saturday. He had been living in the suburb of Cupey and had spent several days in the hospital before his death. “It’s not easy at the age of 88 to face 500 people trying to take pictures. He never lost his cool,” Levitan recalled in a phone interview with the AP. “He used all his gifts and talents for the good of mankind and that’s what makes him so appealing.”
“He endows the drag queen with papal authority,” Diana Taylor, a New York University Tisch School of Performing Arts professor, wrote in a 2003 critique.
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