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You're right. I misunderstood that it was a news article. It is instead the view of "management." Thank you for point it out--a very important distinction, still, at the L.A. Times.
The L.A. Times has always been a Republican newspaper (anti-labor, pro-big business, though not nutcase Republican like today's Pukes). Like the WSJ once did, they kept it to their editorial page and permitted their reporters to write in-depth, informative news articles (--as opposed to shallow, spun, lying, Pukish 'news' articles) and they still do on some issues.
This is nevertheless a rancid, misleading, lying, manipulative, arrogant editorial.
I have to laugh at the corpo-fascist spin--and projective lie (what they would like to be true)--that association with "Chavez" (the leftist democracy revolution in Latin America) is a liability for Humala. It wasn't for Evo Morales next door in Bolivia. It wasn't for Rafael Correa in Ecuador. It wasn't for Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez in Argentina. It wasn't for Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil (whose administration went out of their way to deliberately associate with Chavez, in direct and deliberate defiance of Washington). It wasn't for Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. It wasn't for Mel Zelaya in Honduras (though he was toppled by a U.S. coup, he was never more popular than when he made a turn to the left, allied with labor unions and the poor and associated with Chavez). It wasn't true for Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (who sang "Todo Cambio" on stage with Chavez at his election celebration). It wasn't true for Jose Mujica in Uruguay. And it is arguable that failure to associate strongly enough with the leftist democracy movement in the region (summed up in the corpo-fascist press with the word "Chavez") caused the socialist party in Chile to lose the last election to a rightwing billionaire.
The Left represents the vast majority, so it wins elections when the elections are honest. In countries where the rightwing/U.S. "free trade for the rich" interests prevail, we find low public participation and voter turnout, stolen elections, bribery, fraud and intimidation, police/military repression, rightwing violence, U.S. "war on drugs" murder and mayhem, and, in the most extreme cases, mass murder--a culture of murder--aimed at the poor and their advocates, as in Colombia and increasingly in Honduras, or as much of a culture of murder as can be accomplished by the U.S. "war on drugs" without official or obvious client government ties, as in Mexico.
The Left does not need violence and repression to win. The Right needs violence and fear of violence, and rigged elections or rigged situations, or outright coups, or a weak Left (as in Chile) to gain power. Only in the latter case--a weak Left--can it be called an actual 'win.' The Right simply doesn't win, in most cases. They rig and/or murder their way to power.
Thus, it may turn out to be a mistake for Humala to distance himself from Chavez, if that is what he is doing. It is a corpo-fascist 'news' "talking point" that he is, but whether he is or not may be quite difficult to tell, the 'news' is being so spun. I saw one report that he went and visited Lula da Silva and this was spun as Humala "distancing" himself from Chavez--the irony being that Lula da Silva has NEVER "distanced" himself from Chavez.
The classic case of the corpo-fascist press trying to turn their spin into reality is the prior Humala vs Garcia election in Peru. Humala gained a big chunk of votes between the first and second rounds of that election, when Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez endorsed him. But, because he didn't finally win that election, the corpo-fascist press spun it that he lost because of those endorsements (Chavez a liability), and are spinning it that way to this day. They want their anti-Chavez propaganda to have worked. So they say it worked--a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it is simply not true. The Indigenous and the poor "came out of the woodwork" for Humala because of those endorsements. Of the two, I'd say that Morales was probably the more important one--and it's quite interesting that we see the corpo-fascist press, in referring to that Humala vs Garcia election, dropping Morales out of the sentence. This is the key to this particular lie. They want it to be Chavez and no other--Chavez, the bogeyman, Chavez the bad, Chavez the dictator, Chavez the communist, Chavez the incompetent, Chavez the incompetent communist dictator, Chavez the evil, Chavez the buggaboo--who "lost" Humala that election. They want it be this phantom Chavez whom they have created to fulfill their narrative and fondest wish that he become unpopular and ooze his unpopularity onto to anyone who associates with him.
I'm reminded of ten year old girls in a schoolyard gang, picking on another girl and saying she has "kooties." THAT's what the corpo-fascist press is trying to do--exercise their schoolyard bully power to project "kooties" onto Chavez. They are "mean girls."
Similarly, they try to portray Humala as somehow having anti-democratic tendencies and somehow being associated with "the Shining Path." Good God, could they be more obvious in their fearmongering? (--and could they be more false? Humala was in the army fighting the "Shining Path" guerrillas.)
Well, the "times they are a-changing." The new president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, was a member of an armed leftist guerrilla group that fought against the hideous fascist dictatorship in Brazil, and was imprisoned and horribly tortured by them. Jose Mujica, now president of Uruguay, also fought against the fascist junta in Uruguay and was imprisoned by them. Lula da Silva was imprisoned by the Brazilian junta because he was a trade union leader. Daniel Ortega, now president of Nicaragua, led the armed revolution against the fascist oppressors in Nicaragua. Fighting against hideous, U.S. supported regimes--even armed resistance--is a red badge of courage these days. And even Colombia has given up its Langley-written crapola about Chavez and the FARC guerrillas, because nobody in Latin America believes it and it lost Colombia trading partners. Colombia had become the pariah--not Venezuela!
The Left's fighting days are over. Everybody knows that. And everybody knows WHY they had to fight--because U.S. supported regimes were rounding up political Leftists and torturing and murdering them, in horrendous pogroms against democracy. It was NOT POSSIBLE for the MAJORITY to elect leaders who would act in their interest.
Now it is--because so many have struggled so hard to restore democracy and to achieve honest, transparent elections.
Peru is not yet Colombia, Honduras or Mexico (Leftist wins not possible due to U.S. instigated mayhem). It is bordered on almost all sides by leftist democracies (Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina--with short segments adjoining Colombia and Chile). And the Leftist democracies are strongly allied with each other on trade and other issues, with new regional organization and many common goals. However, Peru has been infested with U.S. "free trade for the rich," U.S. and allied transglobal corporations, the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs," and all the corpo-fascist propaganda attendant upon those things (USAID-NED, CIA and private corporate propaganda machines). I don't know the status of Peru's election system (how rigged or honest it is). Much like Venezuela when Chavez was elected, Peru now has a rich urban elite fostered by U.S. "free trade for the rich" that likely gets unfairly favored in opinion polls, who find it easier to vote than poor rural people, whom the USAID finds it easier to "train" and organize because they are concentrated in urban areas and more mobile than the poor, who have untoward sway over the country's institutions and who could get ugly in defending their new riches (as Venezuela's rich urban elite did).
This L.A. Times editorial is useful in understanding the tactics being used to try to prevent the Leftist democracy movement in Latin America from gaining a powerful new partner--Peru. They descry the failure of any of their laundered, Garcia-like candidates to make it to the runoff. They are stuck with Keiko as the only alternative, and she is probably fatally tainted by her father's heinous regime. So they are trying to make the best of it by these bullying statements about and TO Humala: 'Don't you dare ally with Chavez or we'll get you,' they are saying (fascist coup? destabilization? making the economy "scream"?). 'Kiss our corporate butt or else.' Very mafia-like. And whether they are lying--another self-fulfilling prophecy thing--about Humala responding by becoming more "centrist" (friendlier to transglobal corporations like Brazil has been? intending to retain the Bushwhack "free trade" agreement?), is hard to tell. If he is, it could be a mistake (also hard to tell, at this point). (Will some of the poor majority sit on their hands, this time, because he is not representing their interests strongly enough?)
Upshot: The CIA figures he will be elected, despite all their efforts, and the best they can do, at present, to retain Peru as a war profiteering venue ('war on drugs"), as a cocaine revenue source (my guess), as plundering ground for corporate mining and other interests, is to keep the "Chavez bogeyman" bludgeon over his head, for continued and future use, while they further infiltrate the military and 'train' the rich urban elite in various tactics up to and including how to pull off a coup (a la Honduras), should Humala go "too far" in representing the interests of the majority and Peru as a whole. They are not just trying to convince us, they are trying to convince Humala that he is "weak" without them, that he has to "pull to the right" to win, when in truth the most votes are on the left. But they are not talking about votes or anything democratic. They are talking about subversive powers that they have to ruin him (and Peruvian democracy) if he interferes with corporate/war profiteer interests--and included among those subversive and covert powers is the power to unleash destabilizing violence. This is why they mention the "Shining Path." It is a threat.
Peru has not gone off the fascist, militarist cliff yet, so it's a delicate matter. This editorial sneers that he is "weak," while at the same time claiming that he has Chavez kooties, tries to shove him in the direction of corporate-friendly Brazil (a "divide and conquer" tactic that Lula da Silva himself totally rejected), and has the nerve to mention "inequality" in Peru! Guess who has the LEAST inequality in all of Latin America--according to the recent UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean? Venezuela!
But they won't tell you that!
How come Chavez got elected and re-elected, by big margins? What was he elected by the people to do? What has he done? Cut poverty in half! That's where the votes are--on the left, not the right. The votes that Humala needs to get are NOT pro-U.S., pro-corporate, pro-elite, pro-rich votes. They are the votes of the poor. He needs to inspire them to come out and vote. And I hope he does that.
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