En: Freemasonry in Mexico

Freemasonry in Mexico

Source: Wikipedia

Many presidents of Mexico were Freemasons. Freemasonry has greatly influenced political actions in the early republic, as holder of conservative ideas gathered in lodges of the Scottish Rite, while reformists choose the York Rite. Hence escoceses became synonymous with Conservatives, and yorkinos with Liberals. Santa Anna was a Scottish Rite Mason.

History

Freemasonry arrived in colonial Mexico during the second half of the 18th century, brought by French immigrants who settled in the capital. However, they were condemned by the local Inquisition and forced to desist. It is probable, though no written evidence exists, that there were itinerant lodges in the Spanish army in New Spain. Freemasons may even have been able to participate in the first autonomist movements, then for independence, conveying the ideas of enlightenment in the late 18th century. Some historians both Freemasons and non-Freemasons, including Leon Zeldis Mendel and José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli emphasized, that Freemasonry in Latin America had built its own mythology, well away from what history records. The confusion between Patriotic Latin American Societies and Masonic lodges is tenuous. Between the late 18th and early 19th century, their operative structure was very similar, as is indicated by the historian Virginia Guedea.

The first Masonic Lodge of Mexico, 'Arquitectura Moral', was founded in 1806. The year 1813 saw the creation of the first Grand Lodge of Mexico, Scottish Rite Jose Maria Mateos, a leading Liberal politician of the late 19th century, stated in 1884 that illustrious autonomist and independentist as Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon and Ignacio Allende, were Freemasons. According to Mateos, they were, for the most part, initiated in the lodge Arquitectura Moral (now Bolivar No. 73), but it is true that there are no documents to prove his point. Instead, there are documents that tend to prove that the first Governor of the independent Mexico, the emperor Agustín de Iturbide and the Dominican friar Servando Teresa de Mier were Freemasons. But it is true that it was common that the Inquisition used the charge of belonging to Freemasonry for autonomist and independentist, which guarantee the impossibility of proving the innocence of the accused, having regard to the clandestine nature of the Orders. Thus, the archives of the Inquisition merely increase the uncertainties on this subject.

From the independence in 1821 and until 1982, it is believed that many of the leaders of Mexico belonged to the freemasonry. When political independence came about, the few existing lodges came out of hiding and multiplied. With the advent of the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States Joel Roberts Poinsett, the young Mexican Freemasonry is divided into two political movements, without really being defined. Poinsett promotes the creation of the Lodge of York Rite, close to the interests of the United States. Against to the realization of the interventionist theory Manifest Destiny, conservative Freemasons of the Scottish Lodge of the young Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, headed by the last viceroy doctor from Barcelona, Manuel Codorniu, manifest through the newspaper "El Sol".

Thus, around the lodges of the York Rite, meet the Freemasons relatives of American liberalism, what would become the "conservative", but remain close to the Scottish lodges heirs of the Spanish liberalism. Soon, the Freemasons, which do not identify with the existing alternatives, will choose a third way in founding in 1825, a national rite called the National Mexican Rite, which will aim to create a politic model and a clean government in Mexico.

During the French military occupation that began Maximilian I of Mexico to the throne in 1864, various French military lodges, dependent on the Grand Orient de France, arrived in Mexico, but disappear when the French leave the country. Thus, it is very likely that these Itinerant Lodges of the French Rite, regarding to their status invaders, no left influences of ritual. At the museum of Masonic Grand Orient of France, one of retained the standard is a banner of one of those lodges is conserved.

During the nineteenth century Freemasonry was being heralded as a means of removing the influences of the Catholic Church. Several of the men who were masons, had expressed a desire to free women from the church's grasp through education and approached Laureana Wright de Kleinhans to help spread freemasonry. Though she was totally committed to the education of women, she ultimately rejected the organization because they refused to acknowledge the equality of men and women and in fact had an initiation oath which declared "never admit to their ranks a blind man, a madman, or a woman".