Nocturnal 
A Peruvian man named Hitler Mussolini has won a mayoral election while running for a centre-left party, in a result that sounds like a wind-up but absolutely isn’t.
Hitler Mussolini Simeón Flores, 45, took the top job in Queropalca, a tiny district in the Lauricocha province of Peru’s Huánuco department, after securing 229 votes – 34.54% of the 663 valid ballots cast. That left him just 25 votes clear of his nearest rival, as first reported by Yahoo News and the New York Post.
He stood for the centre-left Ahora Nación (Now Nation) party, which campaigns on tackling corruption and bringing in universal healthcare, according to the Gateway Pundit. His closest challenger, Gaspar Benilde Osorio Zambrano, represented the right-wing Popular Renewal party and picked up 204 votes (30.8%), while third-placed Itala Yovana Santillan Vara of the centre-right Country for All party took 187. In total, just 42 votes separated the top three candidates.
Queropalca is home to an estimated 730 people, according to 2024 official data cited by Yahoo News. Results have been published by Peru’s electoral authorities and Simeón Flores has been declared the apparent winner, though formal confirmation is still pending.
Away from the ballot box, Simeón Flores manages the Simeon Sac Investment Group, based in Pillco Marca in the same department, according to his candidate declaration form. He was previously a member of Popular Force, the right-wing populist party led by Peru’s president, Keiko Fujimori, before resigning from it in 2025. It isn’t clear when he joined Ahora Nación. The vote was part of wider regional and municipal elections held across Peru following Fujimori’s victory in the country’s presidential race.
Why it matters
Peru has something of a track record when it comes to electing men named after Adolf Hitler, and Simeón Flores is far from the first. Hitler Alba served as mayor of the Andean town of Yungar between 2011 and 2014, then ran again in 2018 against a rival named Lennin Vladimir Rodriguez Valverde – a contest widely dubbed “Hitler vs Lenin” because of the eerie coincidence. Alba won that race with 47.7% of the vote, dubbing himself “the good Hitler” and insisting his father had chosen the name without knowing its historical baggage.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence that my name is Hitler,” he told Peruvian news agency Efe at the time. “I really don’t have any objection to Hitler. It’s like any other name. For me, it’s as if my name was Juan, Lucas, or Sebastian.”
Peru also elected a lawmaker and surgeon named Hitler Saavedra to Congress, where he served from 2021 until his death in 2024 at the age of 46. As the New York Post notes, it is not uncommon in Peru for parents to pick historic or unusual names for children, regardless of any controversial associations.
The phenomenon isn’t confined to South America either. In Namibia, politician Adolf Hitler Uunona has represented the Ompundja constituency since 2004 and won re-election for a fifth consecutive term in November last year. He has since dropped “Hitler” from his public name, now going simply by Adolf Uunona. “My name is not Adolf Hitler. I am Adolf Uunona,” he told The Namibian, adding that people had wrongly tried to associate him with the dictator.
For now, Simeón Flores is preparing to take up his new role in Queropalca once his win is formally confirmed, joining a small but notable list of Peruvian officials whose names belong to history’s darkest chapter but whose politics sit firmly on the left.
