The Return of the Caudillo; A retired Army officer may become the latest 'man on horseback' to gain power through the ballot box.

Byline: Joseph Contreras and Sally Bowen

A crowd of several thousand gathered in the city of Chiclayo last month to greet the man who could very well become Peru's next president. The compact candidate Ollanta Humala and his equally diminutive 29-year-old wife, Nadine, arrived dressed in bright red T shirts stamped with white letters that read amor por el peru [love for peru], and the patriotic theme was reinforced onstage by a dozen huge cooking pots known as ollas painted in the red and white stripes of the national flag. Thanks to the coincidence of spelling, an olla will appear on the ballot in this month's election as the symbol for the retired Army officer's fledgling Peruvian Nationalist Party. And one of the millions of voters who will mark his cross over the humble pot is Jesus Flores. "You have to believe in someone," says the Chiclayo street vendor. "We want a hard-liner who can put an end to corruption. We want radical change."

So do many others across Latin America. Riding the wave of discontent that has lifted Venezuela's Hugo ChAvez and Bolivia's Evo Morales to power, Humala, 44, has come from third place to lead polls going into Peru's April 9 vote. Like ChAvez and Morales, he defends the rights of the poor and rails against the evils of neoliberal economic policies. But even more important than his populist rhetoric may be another characteristic he shares with ChAvez, as well as Ecuador's former president Lucio Gutierrez: his iron-fisted image. Like them, Humala's main "qualification" for the nation's highest office is his leadership of a failed coup, one he led as an active-duty lieutenant colonel in October 2000 against then president Alberto Fujimori. Now he's almost certain to finish among the top two vote-getters, and if he goes on to win a runoff election expected to take place in May, he'll become the latest in a series of political outsiders with military backgrounds to take power in Latin America.

Far from discrediting these modern-day putschists in the eyes of their countrymen, their decision to take up arms is seen as an asset, a sign of personal valor and commitment in a thoroughly corrupted political culture. They represent the 21st-century reincarnation of the caudillo --the charismatic man-on-horseback figure who still captures the imagination of millions with promises of a better future. The word is literally translated as chief or leader, but its full meaning encompasses the patronage-dispensing political boss who takes care of his followers in exchange for their unswerving loyalty. Humala recognizes the power of the image. His short-lived mutiny, he told NEWSWEEK, "was one of the best things I have done in my life. [It] cost me my career, [but] that made me reflect on Peru. I realized there's no real democracy here. Traditional politicians aren't able to make contact with the people."

In more institutionalized political cultures like Chile's or Mexico's, the term caudillo has become faintly derisive. But in other countries, particularly those where traditional political parties are perceived to have failed their constituents, many voters have thrown their support behind forceful men of humble origins who denounce the powers that be. These latter-day caudillos "exploit the notion that they are coming from the people and represent the poor of the country," says Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a former Venezuelan cabinet minister. "They embody the frustrations of the 1990s, when people were told that democracy and market ...