In case we weren't scared enough...

Peruvian Front-Runner's Family an Issue
Apr 5, 2006

By MONTE HAYES
Associated Press Writer

LIMA, Peru

Presidential front-runner Ollanta Humala admires a former dictator and once launched a military uprising himself. He promises heavy state intervention in a free-market economy and wants to end U.S.-backed eradication of Peru's coca crop.

But with national elections set for Sunday, what really scares some people is his family. His father is a Marxist who praises Hitler. His mother suggested that gunning down homosexuals would reduce immorality.

One brother is in jail awaiting trial for an armed revolt. Another brother is running against him for president, although Ulises Humala's racist platform advocating second-class status for the light-skinned elite has drawn him less than 1 percent support.

Ollanta Humala -who holds a narrow lead over Lourdes Flores, a pro-free-market former congresswoman - insists he harbors none of the intolerance that characterizes his clan.

"I'm not homophobic," the 43-year-old retired army lieutenant colonel said during a recent meeting with foreign correspondents. "In the 21st century, I don't think anyone should be discriminated against for such preferences or options, whatever word you want to use."

But many Peruvians are skeptical.

"He can't be believed," said Fernando Rospigliosi, a former interior minister. "He's a man who lies systematically."

Ollanta Humala is widely perceived as part of a rising tide of leftist leaders in Latin America responding to widespread discontent with free-market policies seen to have done little for the poor, and with the discredited political class that implemented them.

He is closely allied with Venezuela's populist President Hugo Chavez, another former military man who led a revolt as a precursor to running for elected office, and with Bolivia's recently elected socialist President Evo Morales, a coca-leaf farmer who like Humala supports and end to U.S.-backed coca eradication.

How much influence the Humala clan would have in Ollanta's presidency remains unclear.

His jailed brother, Antauro, who joined Ollanta in a short-lived military uprising against former President Alberto Fujimori in 2000, recently said his father would have a strong role.

"My father is a fundamentalist of pure reason," he said. "If you're talking about public posts for him, that is unimportant, as it is for the rest of the family. Our strength is ideology. He is an ideological patriarch of the Peruvian people, whose weight is greater than that of the combined official team."

Ollanta dissociated himself from the declarations and has shown increasing annoyance with questions about his family.

"What my parents say is their business," he insisted last week. "They're not running for anything. They don't belong to my party and they're not going to be part of my government."

But TV talk show host Jaime Bayly noted that Ollanta for three years let Antauro publish a newspaper named "Ollanta" that preached violence against minorities.

"If he really repudiated those ideas, he should have demanded that his brother withdraw his name from the publication, but he didn't," Bayly said.

Bayly, who is bisexual, says he has seen the family's intolerance firsthand. He said that when he invited Humala's parents onto his show, the father responded: "Tell that queer we're not going to his program and when we're in the government, we're going to have him shot."

A few days later, Humala's mother, Elena Tasso, was quoted by the Expreso newspaper as saying: "I bet if they shot two homosexuals, you would see less immorality in the streets."

Antauro claims he acted on Ollanta's orders in leading an uprising last year in an Andean town that left four police officers dead, a charge Ollanta denies.

Several weeks ago, Antauro gave a taped statement to a radio station saying President Alejandro Toledo, his wife and Peru's 120 congressmen should be executed by firing squads for treason. He also said "revolutionary measures" would begin July 28, the day Peru's next elected government will take office.

Antauro is running from jail for congress; if elected he would enjoy immunity from prosecution for his uprising.

Ollanta brushed off his brother's prediction, calling him "crazy."

But he has been evasive about accusations linking him to other violence. Villagers in eastern Peru say he ordered the torture and killing of suspected leftist guerrilla sympathizers in 1992, when he commanded a jungle counterinsurgency base. Humala calls the charges a smear campaign.

The Humalas say they prepared their seven children from a young age to be revolutionaries. At dinner, each child had to discuss some aspect of Peruvian history from a nationalist viewpoint.

The 75-year-old patriarch, Isaac Humala, says he is a descendant of Inca royalty and always hoped his children would transform Peru into a nation dominated by its "copper-skinned" majority of Indians and mestizos, stripping power from the white elite.

He has said he raised his children to take power _ if necessary through a military coup and that is why he sent two of his sons to a military academy.

"If I command 60, 100 or 1,000 armed men, I can take the palace and from the palace impose ethno-nationalism," he said, referring to the racial creed he preaches.



Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com