By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
It's not just Ollanta Humala's nationalist rhetoric that has many Peruvians on edge.
What's caused even more worry is his family, which is headed by an avowed racist and includes two brothers running for president and Congress on a ticket promoting racist views.
The family - so large it's dubbed a "clan" by Peru's media - is led by a 75-year-old patriarch born in a remote Andean village who considers himself a descendant of Inca royalty.
Isaac Humala calls himself a Marxist, expresses admiration for Adolf Hitler and believes Peru's "copper-colored" majority of Indians and mestizos should rule the country. He says the white elite that has governed for most of Peru's history would have a lower status if he had his way.
"It's good to make the whites suffer so that they will learn," the retired lawyer said in an interview in his living room, decorated with pre-Columbian pottery.
Ollanta Humala, who does not speak the Quechua language of Peru's highland Indians, has repeatedly denied he is a racist.
"My father has influenced my formation as a nationalist but I have not taken from him his racial xenophobia," he said in a recent interview.