Legend of Walter Mercado" on Netflix. (Netflix)“Love is the reason for everything.”
That was the tenet that steered Puerto Rican astrologer and Latinx icon Walter Mercado for over 40 years as he was beamed into households eager for horoscopes, and even more for hope. He preached positivity with unwavering conviction while cloaked in outlandish capes and dazzling jewelry, a vision of opulence at once otherworldly, genderless, yet perpetually familiar. Magnetic to a fault, he commanded attention.
A fixture in the lives of 120 million Latinos in the U.S. and Latin Americans across the continent, Mercado, whose mortal body departed this metaphysical plane in November 2019, had been absent from the small screen for more than a decade, but never from the memories of those for whom his image symbolizes a comforting childhood souvenir.
Two years prior to his passing, a trio of Latinx storytellers — co-directors Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch, and producer Alex Fumero — embarked on an astral voyage to make a movie about Mercado’s life, legacy and his sudden banishment from the airwaves.
With nearly empty pockets (at first) as they went into production, but with the stars aligned in their favor, they achieved alchemy in the documentary “Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado” — a loving title taken from the astrologer's catchphrase sign-off after every appearance. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and debuted Wednesday on Netflix.
“We were amazed that a documentary had not been made about Walter. We all understood just how much he means to all of our friends who are Latinos,” says Costantini, who is Argentine American. She grew up in Milwaukee without many Latinos around other than those on the Spanish-language network Univision, where Mercado’s segment was featured on the on the newscast "Primer Impacto" for many years.
Like many Latinx millennials and xennials, Costantini associates Mercado’s presence with her grandmother. She remembers laying on her lap quietly as she waited for the astrologer to call out her sign.
“I can't separate the nostalgia that I have for my childhood and Walter’s persona," she says. "They’re synonymous for me, like how other Americans see Mr. Rogers, maybe even Oprah or Big Bird. For me it’s always been Walter.”
Flamboyant and unafraid to overtly tap into his femininity, Mercado transcended binary notions of sexual identity without ever formally coming out or explicitly discussing his orientation. Latina matriarchs rationalized his demeanor and attire based on the mystical context in which he performed. Seen as a regal, near holy figure, anything was permissible. He understood his audience, what he could or could not say, and prospered to legendary status within a traditional community where homophobia still runs rampant.
Costantini’s own grandmother only recently came to terms with the possibility that Mercado might have not been heterosexual — a major step for those raised in a generation for which any concepts outside the norm were taboo.
“He made a conscious decision to create a larger-than-life character in a literal way that shielded him from the types of scrutiny that other people who are different in that way face. If you are a wizard you can be anything," Fumero explains. "Your magic gives you a veil.”
The Walter testMercado tapped into Latinos’ unique relationship with spirituality, one often ruled by Catholic practices but which tacitly admits esotericism as well. His brand of astrology, which fused Santería, Eastern religions and Christianity, guided his every step, business-related and otherwise, even the decision to participate in “Mucho Mucho Amor.”
“As soon as we got on the phone to pitch him the project he said, ‘This is very interesting, but I have one question: What are your astrological signs?’ We were floored that this would come into play,” says Costantini.
In that initial interaction, after tracking down his family in order to reach him, the team understood that Mercado, true to his nature, would be far from an easy subject to decode. As Costantini points out, Spanish-language press tends to behave in a rather pushy and sensationalist manner, and Mercado had half a century of media training in that harsh environment. He was prepared for anything thrown at him. “Any question we asked, he would have a flirtatious answer that would crack us up and make us forget the line of questioning we were going through,” she recalls.
Before foraying into documentary filmmaking, Costantini made a living as an investigative journalist. But not even that training prepared her for the difficulty of interviewing Mercado.
“I’ve interviewed drug lords, corrupt CEOs and lawyers who were at the top of their game, and Walter is still the most media-trained person of them all,” she says. “He has taken such care to curate his public persona of Walter, that getting behind that was really one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done in my career.”
Guarded in his infectious optimism, Mercado was willing to dish about the good times. But getting serious and honest about the unglamorous parts of his day to day, or his legal battle with former manager Guillermo Bakula over the right to the use of his own name, required the directors to ask the same questions multiple times and with different approaches to arrive at an approximation of the truth from his standpoint.
In the debilitating court dispute to regain control of his brand, Mercado was forced to renounce to the glitz of the cameras — his lifeline — in 2006. Futile attempts to return were made. Which makes the documentary's new account of his storied existence a long-overdue final performance.
Over the months, the filmmaker's professionalism evolved into sincere closeness with Mercado, and some, though not all, of the walls came down.
“He started as this magical being in our childhood memories," Costantini says, "then slowly became a real person to us, and eventually he turned into an eccentric, fabulous tio abuelo [great uncle]. By the end we were very close to the family.”
Testament to that earned and mutual affection is that Tabsch and Fumero served as pallbearers at Mercado’s funeral in Cupey, Puerto Rico.
The maximalist“We jokingly used to ask him if he would describe himself as a minimalist and he would say, ‘No, I’m a maximalist,’ and that was true for more than just his fashion and decor," Tabsch says. "He had saved material that spanned the entirety of his life and career. There were loads of photographs, newspaper and magazine clippings, and programs — much, much more than what we could use in the film.”
Countless hours were spent digitizing those mementos with the help of the Wolfson Archives in Miami. The more intimate the relationship between the team and Walter and his family became, the more access they were given to go hunting in his home, which was, as Tabsch puts it, a treasure trove. Tons of VHS tapes of TV appearances were in his closet, under beds and in bookcases, and a stash of Betamax tapes with recordings of some of his earliest shows was found in the laundry room.
