Still, the Venezuelan leader's influence remains robust in Peru, especially in the desolate southern high-plains altiplano along the shores of Lake Titicaca, ancestral homeland of the Quechua and Aymara peoples. Most residents are of indigenous ancestry; about eight in 10 live in poverty.
A rough, homespun variant of leftist politics predominates here and elsewhere in Peru's southern highlands. Anti-government protests regularly shut down roads and cities, including one last month that closed the tourist mecca of Cuzco. Officials in Lima see the handiwork of Chavez sympathizers. The political militancy is the product of decades of alienation from the central government, religious and indigenous activism, guerrilla warfare and violent clashes over land. Anti-U.S. rhetoric is abundant and Garcia is widely disliked.
This chilly, hardscrabble Peru is far removed from the export-fueled, balmy coastal boomtown that is the capital of Lima. Many in the south eke out a living as subsistence farmers, planting potatoes, beans and other crops and raising cows and sheep. Their children migrate to the cities.
"We in Puno are like another country," said Fuentes, 47, speaking in nearby Juliaca at his family-run radio station, where a giant photo of him and Chavez peers from a wall. "We don't see the economic bonanza of Lima. The benefits don't trickle down here."
Just down the road is Bolivia, a nation with similar demographics and geography (Puno sits at about 12,000 feet) and a Chavez intimate, Evo Morales, as president. Like Morales, Fuentes has rejected U.S. anti-drug policy by calling for greater legalization of the coca bush, whose leaves yield cocaine.
A lawyer by training and one of seven children of Quechua campesinos, Fuentes gained prominence locally as a kind of Rush Limbaugh of the angry left. His on-air perorations feature anti-U.S. tirades and bouquets for Chavez and Morales.
Fuentes mobilized rural indigenous support to help secure his election in 2006, winning with less than 20% of the vote against a divided opposition. His exaltation of Chavez soon alarmed Lima and raised eyebrows at the U.S. Embassy.
"Some authorities in Puno want to mortgage out Peru to a foreign power," Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo told Peruvian radio in a direct swipe at Fuentes.
But Fuentes denies receiving any petrodollars or formal aid from Venezuela. Nor has any proof of such a link emerged. He calls himself a patriotic Peruvian. Still, Fuentes says he is treated like a foreign agent.
