LIMA, Peru _ Ollanta Humala arrived alone. No one  accompanied the presidential candidate who took Peruvian politics by surprise. Not even an aide or a press coordinator. Wearing blue jeans, a short-sleeve shirt and huaraches (sandals), he walked in and offered his hand.

        "Ollanta," he said, introducing himself.

        That is how he appears to many here. This 43-year-old former military officer, who once headed a coup, is a loner and an independent without money or allies. He was, for a couple of months, ahead in the polls for the April 9
presidential elections. But in recent weeks, he has fallen to second place behind candidate Lourdes Flores. But his message against traditional politicians is getting across.
"We've been deceived by the traditional governing class," he said to me in an exclusive interview at his campaign headquarters. "The people have sensed that these representative democracies don't really represent the
interests of the citizens."

        Latin Americans in general, and Peruvians in particular, hoped for a new message as well as a new messenger. And Humala says he is the man. He is for
many Peruvians what new President Evo Morales is for Bolivians or President Hugo Chavez is for Venezuelans.

        That is, someone who claims to represent the
downtrodden and who, in a change of strategy, turns away from violent methods to gets takes power through votes.

        He was not always that way. Humala attempted a coup d'etat in 2000 against the Alberto Fujimori regime, but was quickly defeated and imprisoned.

        Pardoned by Congress, Humala was then dispatched as military attache to Peru's embassies in Paris and Seoul, Korea, before coming home and being retired from the army. But he returned with a mission in mind.

        Humala prefers to call himself a "nationalist" or "progressive." He rejects the term "leftist." However, he acknowledges that he has received advice from Chavez who, he believes, is trying to establish "socialism for
the 21st century." At the end of 2005, Humala visited Caracas, where Chavez called him a "Quixote."

        "Has Hugo Chavez financed your campaign?" I asked.
"No, he's not financing me," he answered, with the smile and weariness of someone who has answered the same question a thousand times before. "What indeed he has given me is advice ... you have to take into account that Hugo Chavez's political and military performance is similar to mine; we're both army commanders."

        Humala has visited Cuba _ when he spent his honeymoon at the Varadero beach resort _ but he has not met Cuban leader Fidel Castro. However, he has said he hopes "to have the chance to meet Fidel." When Humala was born, Castro had been in power for four years. However, he hardly views the Cuban leader with criticism.
"I do not see him as a dictator," he told me. "Whether Castro is a dictator or not is a problem for the Cuban people ... in any case, if I get to govern, we're not going to break relations with Cuba."

        Also, he has not kept secret his admiration of another dictator, Juan Velazco Alvarado, who, in 1968, toppled the democratically elected government of Fernando Belaunde Terry in Peru.

        "As a man, he is someone to admire," he said about Velazco.

        However, he assured me it does not mean that in the event he wins the election he would become an authoritarian leader.

        Humala eludes any easy political classification. He declares himself "anti-imperialist" and denounces "the harmful effects of globalization (and) the perforation of sovereignties." But then, at the same time, he told
me he'd like to meet U.S. President George W. Bush.
If you had to choose, I asked him, between an alliance with the United States or with Chavez and Castro, what would you do?

        "I don't think the situation would ever come to that," he told me, pragmatically. "In politics, things are not black and white. Politics is, by definition, the art of the possible."

        Of course. But his decision, like that of Morales in Bolivia, not to eradicate coca cultivation would put him in clear confrontation with the United States.

        "No, I'm not going to eradicate it," he told me unhesitatingly. "What I'm going to do is substitute excess coca crops with income-producing alternatives."

        I didn't bother to tell him others have tried the very same formula and have failed. He already knows that. Meanwhile, illegal drug traffic grows monstrously.

        Humala's star has recently dimmed in the polls, not because of his positions regarding Chavez, Castro, Bush or coca, but because of circumstances rarely picked up by the media outside Peru. Humala's talkative father, Isaac Humala, a self-described "ethno-cacerista" or ultra
nationalist, has said "the real Peruvian is Indian, mestizo" and that the white man "is a failure."

        "I'm not racist, and I do not think you can construct a political plan based on people's skin color," he said, a little irritated. "That is my father's problem ... but they're using it to destroy the son ... they want to see how a father can damage his son."

        More complicated, however, are the accusations of human rights violations leveled against him. Several alleged witnesses have assured the Peruvian press that in 1992, Humala was the so-called "Captain Carlos" responsible for killings and torture in the villages surrounding the Madre Mia military base in the Peruvian jungle.

         One of the cases most widely circulated in the Peruvian media is Teresa Avila's. She claims to have begged "Captain Carlos" not to execute her sister, Natividad, who was detained and charged with being a member of the rebel Shining Path group. But, according to her testimony, he replied: "If it were up to me, I would kill them." Natividad, according to her sister, was found dead and signs of torture were evident.

        "I was a Captain Carlos," acknowledged Humala during the interview.

        "But I was not the Captain Carlos Gonzalez they are talking about." The matter, regardless of the truth, as well as allegations of sexual harassment against his running mate, have put Humala on the defensive.

        He is betting, however, he can win in the second electoral round. If none of the more than 23 presidential candidates receives 50 percent of the vote plus one, there will be a runoff in May, between the first two candidates.

        And that's how Humala, with the votes from the small opposition parties, could become the president of Peru.

        "We really represent a change," he told me, before departing. "We are not more of the same. We are hitting back at the economic (and) political powers ... what we are doing will indeed change the country."

        There's no doubt that if Humala wins the presidency he will exert a change on Peru. But the crucial question is, how?