A small-time Peruvian town is drawing attention from around the world after a man named Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores won a mayoral election. Flores, a 45-year-old businessman who represented the center-left Ahora Nacion party, was elected mayor of Queropalca, a remote district in the Peruvian Andes. He won 229 votes, or 34.5 per cent of the valid ballots, defeating his closest rival, Gaspar Benilde Osorio Zambrano of the Renovacion Popular party, by 25 votes.
Named after two fascist dictators, Flores campaigned on the promise of improving roads and transportation, education, health, and the local economy in his Peruvian town, according to a report in BBC.
While Flores has emerged victorious, the fact that he shares a name with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, “two of the most well-known figures of 20th-Century European totalitarian regimes,” has become a big talking point in Peru and abroad.
Queropalca, in Lauricocha province in the Huanuco region, has just over 730 residents, according to 2024 official data.
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This is not the first instance in which a politician with such an uncanny name has won an election. In 2018, Hitler Guesclin Alba Sanchez won the mayoral election in Yungar, a town in the Ancash region, with 47.7 per cent of the vote over Lennin Vladimir Rodriguez Valverde
In November last year, a Namibian politician, who shares his name with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, won a local election in the African country. Adolf Hitler Uunona, a member of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO)
Uunona has repeatedly clarified that he has no connection to the historical figure, saying: “My father gave me this name, but it does not mean I have Adolf Hitler’s character or resemble that of Adolf Hitler of Germany.”
