By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 2, 2006; A18
UQUIA, Peru -- On April 9, every adult who lives in a cluster of adobe huts clinging to the Andean mountainside here will rise before the sun, walk miles down a rocky path to a larger village and stand in line for hours to vote for a new president.
If they don't, they will face a fine of about $40 -- an enormous sum in a country where half the population lives on $1.25 a day or less, and in a community where securing one's property often means tying the family pig to a 10-pound rock.
But their votes will be valuable for another reason -- poor Peruvians are helping make a front-runner out of Ollanta Humala, an authoritarian, nationalistic ex-military commander who promises to redistribute wealth like a 21st-century Robin Hood.
"A president must be strong and strict," said Estelita Celmi, 35, a mother of three who sat under a thatch shelter knitting a blanket last week. A sweeping vista of green valleys spread out before her. "And it's better when they are from the military, because they work harder, earn less and suffer more. They understand our lives."
Humala's support in villages like this one in the Ancash region has helped him climb to the top of a presidential ballot with 20 names on it. Surveys show he has a six-point lead over Lourdes Flores Nano, a former congresswoman who is trying to follow Chile's Michelle Bachelet and become Latin America's second female president elected this year.
If no candidate gets at least 50 percent of the vote, a second round pitting the top two finishers will be scheduled within a month.
Foreign critics often compare Humala to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The two are friends who share a penchant for tough talk, revolutionary rhetoric and a deep distrust of the free-market policies that many economists say have helped Peru achieve record economic growth . That growth, Humala contends, hasn't translated into new jobs, relieved the poverty and illiteracy plaguing the countryside or increased social services.
"We are living a dictatorship of the rich," Humala, 43, said last week while campaigning in the southern city of Tacna. "I am happy that the rich and powerful call me anti-system if it is their system that keeps Peru in poverty and misery."
Although his words echo neighboring Latin American leftists like Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales, the crooked sign hand-painted on an adobe wall near the village suggests a source of inspiration far closer to home: "Humala -- Velasco Lives!"
Gen. Juan Velasco, a populist army officer, oversaw a military coup in 1968 and ruled Peru with an iron hand until 1975. The era was marked by the nationalization of private industries, attempts to redistribute land from the wealthy to the poor, and the state takeover of the print and broadcast media.
Humala's admiration of Velasco -- as well as his plans to take more control of the mining and energy sectors and impose a windfall tax on highly profitable companies -- has earned him enemies among the Peruvian elite in Lima, the capital, where most newspapers are full of critical stories about his outspoken family and volatile campaign.
His mother has said she would shoot homosexuals to set an example if she were in power. His father said his son should release the leaders of the Shining Path, a guerrilla group that terrorized the countryside in the 1980s and early 1990s with calls for a Marxist revolution. His brother is in jail for trying to force President Alejandro Toledo to resign last year after he and 120 army reservists seized a southern town; he has now called for the execution of Toledo and all 120 members of congress for selling Peru to foreign interests.
Last week, Humala fired his campaign spokesman after he used a common obscenity to describe first lady Elaine Karp, and recently he has tried to distance himself from his family's extreme views.
Meeting with foreign journalists Friday in Lima, he emphasized that his government would respect property rights, press freedoms and foreign investment. But he also placed himself in a new generation of Latin American leaders who aim to represent the poor and powerless, saying, "I am not going to promise a bridge, a little school, those things. I am going to seek to construct dignity."
"This is a process happening throughout the region," Humala said. "New regimes have surged within these conditions, democratically. We are seeing a new face of Latin America. It's trying to construct a family, a Latin American family."
In Uquia, where information about the candidates usually spreads by word of mouth, people are not familiar with the more sensational reports about Humala's family.
"I hadn't heard that," said Rodrigo Menacho Albino, when asked if he knew Humala had once been jailed for attempting to seize a U.S.-owned copper mine to protest government corruption.
What he has heard, the farmer said, is that Humala may finally bring electricity to all parts of his village. His friends, who all grow potatoes and corn on small plots of steeply sloped land, told him Humala might be as good a president as Alberto Fujimori.
Fujimori, who swept to office in 1990 on a similar wave of popular discontent, cracked down on the Shining Path and reformed Peru's economy. But his authoritarian style alienated many, and he was driven into exile in 2000 after allegations of human rights abuses and corruption. He is now in custody in Chile.
"Fujimori was the best president we've had because with him, it was the first time that cars were able to come up here," said Menacho Albino, 28, taking a break from filling potato sacks.
That's how leaders are judged in Uquia. Fujimori is represented by the public minibuses that in the mid-1990s began circulating among mountainside villages, a benefit that easily outweighs the corruption charges in the minds of many here.
Toledo, who is of mixed indigenous and Spanish blood, also appealed to many poor Peruvians and promised to develop the country more equitably. But his tenure has been tarnished by mismanagement and charges of personal misconduct, and in this village his legacy is symbolized by bare wooden poles that still lack electrical wires.
The memory of former president Alan Garcia, who now runs third in polls behind Humala and Flores, leaves a bitter taste in many mouths: Runaway inflation that marked his term in the late 1980s created a sugar shortage in the village. And Flores, 46, is distrusted by many here because, as one woman phrased it, "She's a millionaire who doesn't have any children."
According to a survey released by the United Nations last week, about 60 percent of Peruvians said they either did not know what democracy was or disliked it; about 13 percent of those said they would prefer a non-democratic, hard-line government. In a similar poll last year, about 87 percent said they were not satisfied with democracy.
"Peru has experienced a regressive evolution of democracy in recent years, after Toledo failed to comply with the expectations of the public," said Marta Lagos, a Chile-based pollster. "That's why Humala has such a chance to be elected, because he's grabbing at this idea that he represents a contrast."
With dissatisfaction ruling the day, all of the candidates are running on campaigns of change. For example, Flores -- who has said she will support the free-trade agreement pending with the United States -- has emphasized her gender along with her desire for fiscal discipline, and she has earned support from many who believe a woman could bring more honesty and compassion to government.
But no candidate represents more of a stark change than Humala, which helps explain why about 40 percent of the poorest fifth of Peruvians support him and only about 1 percent of the richest fifth do, according to recent polls.
"Politicians are always promising things to us," said Benancia Cochachin Palma, 60, tending to her small herd of sheep near a cornfield. "They need to deliver sometime."
Special correspondent Lucien Chauvin in Tacna contributed to this report.
