Series of interviews with top presidential candidates across Latin America is highlight of regional summit.

Interviews with prominent presidential hopefuls gave investors real insight into the policies of candidates in major countries across Latin America during last week’s Reuters summit on the region. Brazil’s ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff, trying to reassure investors she would stick with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s successful policies and not turn the country to the left, promised strict fiscal discipline to push down public sector debt if she wins the October election. She added she would revamp the tax code, one of several structural reforms investors are hoping for from Brazil’s next leader. Surprise Colombian presidential front-runner Antanas Mockus said he would attack widespread corruption while sticking to outgoing President Alvaro Uribe’s tough security policies, and former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos said the country needed him to stand up to socialist President Hugo Chavez of neighboring Venezuela. Marcelo Ebrard, the leftist mayor of Mexico City and a likely candidate for the presidential election in 2012, said he would take the army off the streets if elected, reversing the conservative government’s policy of putting troops at the heart of a violent drugs war that has rattled investors. Peru’s Ollanta Humala, a left-wing nationalist who scared financial markets when he almost won the presidential election in 2006, said he hopes to make alliances with other parties to give himself a better chance at the election next year. He insisted he was not an extremist but said he would renegotiate contracts held by foreign firms in the energy sector if he wins. One of his main rivals, early front-runner Keiko Fujimori, told Reuters that a Humala presidency would be “catastrophic” but that Peruvians would not vote for a left-wing candidate this time around.