A man called Hitler Mussolini just won a mayor's race in Peru

Two dictators. One ballot paper. And 229 people who ticked the box anyway.

On Sunday 4 October 2026, a 45-year-old man named Hitler Mussolini Simeón Flores won the race for mayor of Queropalca, a tiny town high in Peru's Andes. The BBC ran it under the headline "Man named Hitler Mussolini elected mayor in Peru", and newsrooms from Madrid to Berlin followed.

The name sounds like a joke. The man is not. He runs for a centre-left party, and the people who voted for him live in a place so small that it has only about 730 residents.

Who is Hitler Mussolini Simeón Flores?

He is 45 and runs an investment company called Grupo de Inversiones Simeon SAC, based in Pillco Marca in the same region, according to Peruvian and Argentine reports.

He ran for Ahora Nación, a centre-left party founded in 2023. Until last year, his own filing to Peru's election board shows, he belonged to Fuerza Popular, the party of President Keiko Fujimori. That is a big swing from right to left.

Queropalca sits in Lauricocha province, in the Huánuco region north of Lima. Official 2024 data puts its population at about 730 people. He is due to take office on 1 January, once election officials formally confirm the result.

Photo: Picoz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

How close was the vote in Queropalca?

Very close. He won 229 of 663 valid votes, which is 34.5%.

The runner-up was Gaspar Benilde Osorio Zambrano of the right-wing Renovación Popular, with 204. A third candidate, Itala Yovana Santillán Vara of País para Todos, got 187.

229.00 votesFlores

204.00 votesOsorio

187.00 votesSantillán

See the numbers

Flores	229.00 votes
Osorio	204.00 votes
Santillán	187.00 votes

Source: Peru's electoral office ONPE results, as reported by Infobae and Euronews, 9 Oct 2026. Flores: Ahora Nación. Osorio: Renovación Popular. Santillán: País para Todos.

The gap between first and third place was 42 votes. Move 13 voters from the winner to the runner-up and the headline would have been about somebody else.

Is he the first Peruvian politician named Hitler?

No. Not even close. Peru has been here before, and the earlier case was almost cinema.

In 2018 the town of Yúngar, in the Áncash region, had a mayor's race between a man named Hitler and a man named Lennin. Hitler Alba had already served as mayor from 2011 to 2014. Lennin Vladimir Rodríguez Valverde tried to knock him off the ballot. He failed, and Alba won with 47.7% of the vote.

Alba campaigned as "the good Hitler". His slogans included "Hitler returns" and "Hitler with the people". Here is who we can source.

Source: Euronews, La Nación (Argentina), El Financiero (Mexico), Peru Reports. Only people named in published reports are listed.

Photo: Waterloo1883 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

How many people in Peru are named Hitler?

More than you would guess. Peru's civil registry, known as Reniec, counted 3,943 people registered simply as "Hitler" in 2023. Another 99 are "Adolfo Hitler" and 3 are "Adolf Hitler".

A name-ranking site called Forebears puts Peru first in the world for the name. One report notes that nobody can confirm that as a worldwide record.

Why do Peruvian parents name their kids Hitler?

The short answer from the people involved is that the name sounded cool and foreign.

Hitler Alba told reporters in 2018 that his father picked the name because it sounded foreign. He says giving children the names of famous historical figures was fashionable in the 1980s. He also says his father did not know the history behind it.

Reports say Peruvians often choose historic or unusual names even when those names carry a dark past elsewhere. The name travels, the meaning stays behind.

That is how you end up with a Hitler and a Lennin in one tiny race.

What has he said about his name?

Nothing that we could find. None of the coverage we read quotes Hitler Mussolini Simeón Flores on why he has these two names or how he feels about carrying them.

The reports do say he did not run for any group linked to the ideologies of the two dictators. CNN Chile pointed out that sharing a name does not by itself show any link.

What he did put on his campaign leaflet, according to Infobae, was roads, a municipal stadium, and plans for tourism, education and health. For a town with a mountain like Siula Grande on the horizon, tourism is not a small promise.

Photo: Waterloo1883 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What did the internet do with it?

What it always does. On X, lots of people could not get past the pairing of the two names. Some posts came from accounts that do not speak Spanish at all.

Argentines noticed something else. His second surname, Simeón, reminded them of Atlético Madrid coach Diego Simeone. One post joked that the "e" in his surname was disappearing.

Small-town mayors rarely trend worldwide. It happened this week anyway, the same week a French mayor's march with students and an Iowa council's "Hail Satan" prayer had people arguing about what local officials stand for. Add a Cape Town freeway that stops in mid-air and local government is having a week.

Will a town of 730 really be run by Hitler Mussolini?

Barring a surprise, yes. The result is still "virtual" until the electoral authorities formally proclaim it, but all of the ballots have been counted.

Look at the pattern, though. Yúngar voted for a man called Hitler in 2018 over a man called Lennin. They had already had him as mayor once and chose him again. In Queropalca, 229 neighbours looked at a ballot with Hitler Mussolini Simeón Flores on it, and picked him by 25 votes.

Twenty-five votes. If just 13 neighbours had marked a different box, the runner-up would be mayor and the world would never have heard of Queropalca.