Fernando Peña, actor and radio entertainer died of cancer today at the Alexander Fleming clinic in Buenos Aires City.

Borned in Montevideo, Uruguay, Fernando Peña (46-years-old) created several characters he represented at the radio and theatre such us Martin Rivoira Lynch and Milagritos López.

He had AIDS and was hospitalized yesterday due to a liver cancer. Matías Martin, his colleague at FM Metro radio, announced today he died. This radio suspended all its programmes to honour Peña and his ten years as an entertainer.

It is not often the case that a journalist has to break the news of, or comment on, the death of a beloved artist who, just a couple of days ago, made his last public appearance, only to be rushed to hospital two days later, early in the morning, and pronounced dead mid-afternoon.

In Fernando Peña's case, although he was HIV positive and was later diagnosed with liver cancer, his departure came as a surprise. We all knew he was ill, that he had been for a long time. We had the first intimation of death when he was forced to take a couple of days off from his morning show El parquímetro, which aired on Metro 95.1 radio station. It was journalist Matías Martín who yesterday had to break the news of Peña's sudden demise to the media and to Peña's fans, at exactly 4:48pm. Peña had been pronounced dead at 4pm.

Peña was gone, and so was the daily companionship of his radio show, a staple in the life of many Argentines all over the country. After learning of Peña's death, Radio Metro 95.1 decided to cancel its scheduled programming for the day, and instead aired music, just music, bidding the last goodbye to the artist, whose legions of fans yesterday gathered outside the Fleni clinic.

An actor and radio host, Peña was highly controversial for his bold statements about anything from the rights of sexual minorities to the ills of Argentine society, such as corrupt politicians. He was also a fine comedian, last appearing in Conversaciones de una prostituta con su cliente, staged in a small playhouse on Ave. Corrientes.

Born in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, on January 31, 1963, Peña was last heard on his morning show El parquímetro last Saturday. It seemed to be business as usual, journalist Fanny Mandelbaum, a close friend of Peña's, yesterday told a TV news programme.

"But later that night he phoned me to tell me he was in deep pain," Mandelbaum said. "The following day his doctor was called in, and yesterday morning he had to be rushed to the Fleni clinic, where he died in the afternoon," Mandelbaum said in a telephone interview on TN cable news programme.

Infected with HIV, Peña had succeeded in fighting the disease, but only six months later he was diagnosed with a severe case of liver cancer.

However, Peña's spirit and will to live never abated, bent as he was on overcoming this new hurdle on his fragile health.

Over the past few weeks, Peña's liver cancer, which seemed to be in remission, suddenly took a turn for the worse and he had to undergo additional chemotherapy sessions, the reason why he was absent from El parquímetro. According to fellow co-workers, Peña's organs were swollen and he had difficulty breathing, but he carried on until the very end.

Before becoming a showbiz personality, Peña had a more traditional lifestyle, including a stint as a flight attendant. But showbiz was his true calling, making his first TV appearance on the miniseries Sol Negro, which aired on América Television.
Peña landed on the radio thanks to renowned radio host Lalo Mir, who, on board an Eastern Airlines flight bound for Chile, heard a flight attendant's take on an imaginary elderly lady, Milagros López.

Peña's showbiz career soared from that moment on, as Mir, fascinated by Peña's extraordinary acting range, made him a staple of his show on Rock & Pop radio.
It wasn't long before Peña developed a cult following on the strength of his hilarious impersonations of people like "El concheto de San Isidro," "Martín Revoira Lynch," the Caribbean lady "Milagros Dolores Guadalupe López López," "Rafael Orestes Porelorti", the openly gay man "Roberto María Flores," and construction worker "Rubén Ramón Sixto Alegre." Two highlights in his short but prolific career were "Cristina Patricia Megahertz" (La Mega), and "Ricardo Alfredo Ñuñoa Cruz" (Dick Alfredo), a fictional character that hosted his own radio show Grafitti on FM Energy.
After a stint with radio hosts Lalo Mir and Elizabeth Vernaci, Peña landed his own radio show, El parquímetro, which earned a well-deserved primetime spot on La Metro radio. This was Peña's tenth year on El parquímetro.

Controversial for his fictional characters as well as his personal lifestyle and public persona, he was once a guest on Susana Giménez's show, where he declared, "I'm not gay, I'm a long-suffering queer." In 2002, after a bout of pneumonia, Peña went public about being HIV positive, pointing out that he had to digest a "cocktail" of medication to bring down his viral count.

Peña made his stage debut in 2001 with the play Esquizopeña, intimidad rioplatense, followed by Esquizopeña, el musical (2003), Mugre (2004), La burlona tragedia del corpiño (2005), Ni la más puta, sitdown tragedy, Gracias por volar conmigo (2006), and earlier this year Conversaciones de una prostituta con su cliente.

Peña was on familiar turf on all these plays, but he made a true impact with the stage production My Name is Albert With an A, in which he played a serial killer. The play, according to him, contained many biographical elements.

Peña was known, among other things, for the cheerful manner in which he toyed with the idea of death: "It's an unavoidable part of life," he said, adding that "I dare top look (Death) in the face because I'm fully aware of its proximity, and I'm going to laugh a good laugh at it because it wouldn't be surprising that Death should be scared of me."