The popular Mexican fortune teller and tarot reader popularly known as the 'Brujo Mayor' died Friday in Mexico City at age 84 after suffering a respiratory arrest, his relatives said.
Antonio Vázquez Alba stood out for decades in that country for his predictions about the lives of characters from the world of entertainment, politics and sports, in particular for those he made every beginning of the year.
The relatives of Vázquez also reported that his body would be cremated this Friday, and on Saturday there will be a tribute in the place he attended in the colony (neighborhood) of Santa María la Ribera, in the center of the Mexican capital.
The Mexican astrologer became a popular character for appearing on television a few decades ago and making public his predictions, some of them accurate.
Antonio Vázquez Alba, popularly known as 'Brujo Mayor', during one of his appearances to give the predictions of the year. AP
In these apparitions he carried out "cleansings" or rituals and designed potions and "spells".
He always took advantage of the years of the World Cup to make predictions about the matches of the Mexican national team or during the years of presidential elections.
At each beginning of the year he summoned the press, "threw away" the cards and made his forecasts.
At the beginning of 2023 he predicted a stable year for Mexico in terms of the economy, but predicted an increase in violence, the deterioration in the health of the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the continuation of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
His predictions for Mexico and the president
He also said that despite the global problems, the world economy would be "really balanced" and that Mexico "is going to have a really satisfactory year economically."
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Speaking about the elections in June of this year to elect the governors of the Mexican states of Coahuila and State of Mexico, which the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has never lost, he said that "Morena – the party of President López Obrador – will have good results, but many difficulties" and predicted that the State of Mexico "will not be Morena because the PRI will continue to maintain, doing weird things."
On the possibility of a woman succeeding López Obrador in the presidency, the tarotista said that this year the candidate will be defined for the presidency of 2024, and saw the current head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia, with more possibilities of achieving the candidacy over the chancellor, Marcelo Ebrard, and the secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López.
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Vázquez Alba was, without a doubt, a singular character. His history is marked by his predictions and even by the place where he was born, Catemaco, in 1939, a town in the south of the state of Veracruz, known as "the city where sorcerers live".
The inhabitants of Catemaco, whose climate is dominated by fog and gloom, engage in spiritual cleansing and other practices related to divination of the future.
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From having a small outdoor stall in Santa María la Ribera, a neighborhood in the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood, west of downtown Mexico City, where he read the tarot, did divinations with the pendulum method and performed "spiritual cleansings" with plants, Vázquez Alba earned a space in the Mexican popular imagination for his predictions that were of the future of the luminaries of art and entertainment in the country. going from political issues of national interest, to issues of an international nature.
Despite his great popularity, press reports after his death recall that a part of the Mexican population did not give much credence to his predictions because they were not always fulfilled or the forecasts were revealed in the diametrically opposite direction.
Vázquez Alba was also the creator of the magazine El Ocultista and worked for years in radio spaces – where in the 1980s he had his own radio space called Los casos del maleficio – and television.
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He was also the author of three books: Experiences of the Greater Sorcerer, Children of the Super Race and Development of the Mental Faculties.
Perhaps one of his last and most commented predictions was the one he made about the actor Andrés García. On that occasion he said: "I don't like to predict that someone is going to die, but it is ending." Garcia died in April after suffering several health problems.
He also predicted health problems for the Mexican president: "He has to take great care of himself because he does have serious problems. His health is in bad shape," he predicted.
With information from EFE, El País and Independent in Spanish