Last week, former army officer Ollanta Humala was inaugurated as president of Peru, and he vowed to maintain the successful economic policies adopted by his predecessor, Alan García. The significance of that vow should not be understated.

Until recently, Humala was known as a radical populist eager to copy the Venezuelan model. He launched a failed coup in 2000, and Hugo Chávez openly supported him in the 2006 Peruvian presidential race, thereby dooming his candidacy. In 2011, however, Humala won election by moving away from Chávez and citing former Brazilian president Lula da Silva as his inspiration. He then appointed a centrist economic team and announced that Julio Velarde will remain Peru’s central bank governor. As Reuters correspondent Terry Wade reported from Lima, “the cabinet Humala has assembled, by nearly every measure, is more conservative than the one Lula put together when he took office in Brazil in 2003.”