Exit poll results from Peru’s recent local electoral contests have confirmed a surprising outcome: a candidate bearing the names of two of the 20th century’s most infamous fascist leaders has secured a narrow win to lead a remote Andean district.
Forty-five-year-old Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores, running for the centre-left political party Ahora Nación, will take office as mayor of Queropalca, a sparsely populated mountain district located roughly 360 kilometers northeast of Peru’s capital Lima, in the central department of Huánuco. A lifelong resident of the district, Simeon Flores earned 229 votes in the contest, edging out his closest competitor — a candidate from the right-wing Renovación Popular Perú party — by a margin of just 25 votes.
Official data from Peru’s national elections office indicates that just over 700 eligible voters cast ballots in the race for the small district, which is home to fewer than 1,000 residents. Simeon Flores’ share of the vote totaled approximately 34 percent. While his electoral win only impacts a tiny, remote corner of Peru, his unusual given names — a direct reference to Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler and Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini — have drawn widespread international attention to the result.
Local Peruvian outlet Peru21 characterized the candidate’s name, shared with “two of the most well-known figures of 20th-Century European totalitarian regimes,” as a striking talking point of the local contest. This is not the first time a Peruvian politician with the controversial first name Hitler has won local office: in 2018, Hitler Guesclin Alba Sánchez was elected mayor of the Peruvian district of Yúngar. That election gained its own attention after the candidate defeated rival Lenin Vladimir Rodríguez Valverde while campaigning under the unusual slogan “I’m the good Hitler.”
Similar viral attention surrounded a 2020 local election win in Namibia, where Adolf Hitler Uunona, a candidate whose given name also references the Nazi dictator, earned a council seat. In the former German colony, Germanic given names including Adolf remain relatively common among local populations, much like the naming conventions that led to Simeon Flores’ unusual moniker in remote Peru.