¿Las calles de Buenos Aires pobladas de masones? Roberto Aguirre Blanco, published here.The streets of Buenos Aires have that I do not know what "says the tango, and there is some truth in that statement that is open to discussion and questions about our own history. Beyond a palpable reality, the choice of the name of the streets of Buenos Aires has had in its history of two centuries highly controversial decisions by their mayors and politicians. The fabric of a city of more than 202 square kilometers including street names of dictators, coup d'état activist, independence fighters, politicians with impressive history and others of obscure suffering even for their protagonists, celebrities, poets and artists, among others.
However, behind many of them there is another hidden history and dealt with alleged involvement of many Masonic lodges very common in the nineteenth century, and that constituted part of the air and revolutionary struggle for independence of South America.
The debate is opened by a certain weight of the Church who hated these Masonic practices in vogue at that time, and of course defended the presence of the Catholic Kings of Spain, Fernando VII as "a direct son of our lord Jesus Christ" . Historians still debate today about the existence or not of a masonry structure in Logia Lautaro that was founded in Buenos Aires in 1812 by members of the struggle for Independence and whose was more visible head was José de San Martín e Carlos María de Alvear. According to some historians, the Logia Lautaro was never inscribed in the great books of the British Freemasonry and "if is not there probably has never existed as such", according what the historian Patrick Maguire researches, through files in which" even the name of San Martin doesn't appear. "
However, Rodolfo Terragno, author of "San Martin y Maitland" in a recent conference on the subject slipped on this point "there is a story with many gaps," as he investigated the possible involvement of the Liberator in masonic gropus.
"This story begins with the French invasion of Iberic Peninsula, with England concerned with stopping the advance of Napoleon in Europe, but also wanting to avoid its transfer to America. In this context increases the importance of a supranational organization like the Freemasons" said Terragno.
Meanwhile, General José Matías Zapiola, a soldier who came from Europe along with San Martin to fight for independence, a member of the Americans initiated by the Freemasons in England in 1808, was a confidant in their later years of Bartolomé Miter, first historian of the Father of the Motherland (San Martin).
Miter managed with great skill the old military revealed some "secrets" and unveilled some names of the Creoles that integrate the Logia Lautaro. Whence he revealed that were initiated in this ritual the cleric Valentin Gomez, Gervasio Posadas, Juan Larrea, Nicolás Rodríguez Peña, Hipólito Vieytes, Monteagudo, Agrelo Azcuénaga, Amenabar's father, Tom Guido, Perdriel, and the military Murgiondo, Zufriátegui, Manuel Dorrego, Antonio y Juan Ramón Balcarce, among others.
This group, according what is reported by the historian Pacho O'Donnell in his book "Historias Argentinas", reported, mostly,to Charles de Alvear, in a kind of cell formed inside the Lodge with José de San Martín. To the Liberator of Chile and Peru says the so-said Zapiola, reported Julian Alvarez, Alvarez Jonte, Toribio Luzuriaga, Vicente López, Manuel Moreno, Ugarteche y Lezica.
Names with history, which at present are related in the streets of Buenos Aires in neighborhoods like Barracas Monserrat, Balvanera, Palermo, Recoleta and Belgrano Villa Urquiza, among others.
Taking into consideration the open debate on the certainty (or not) of the masonic Logia Lautaro, a scholar of the topic, Emilio Corbière said after his investigation that "San Martin was initiated in Lodge Integridad de Cadiz and there he received the third degree of Symbolic Masonry " . Then, "in 1808, in London, along with Alvear, and other U.S. military such as O'Higgins of Chile, Rocafuerte de Ecuador and even Simón Bolívar, they created other lodges of Masonic Knights. "
"When San Martin was appointed by decree (August 1, 1816) Chief of the Army of Los Andes, almost simultaneously he founded the Lodge of that venture and become its Worshipful Master," says Corbière in his book "Masoneria, Politica y Sociedades Secretas ", published by Sudamericana.
The remains of San Martin were repatriated after arduous negotiations, three decades after his death in 1850 and are presently in a mausoleum outside the perimeter of the Metropolitan Cathedral, although it doesn't appear like that, what was the result of the "excomulgación" that Freemasons were target by the Church authorities.
Some researchers are trying to break with this verison of events and reaffirmed the "strong Catholic affiliation" from San Martin and they raise the fact that when the remains of the Liberator arrive at Buenos Aires, "the Freemasons haven't participated on the tribute because they don't considered the Liberator one of them."
In this statement, no doubt, there is a strong political commitment to "purify" the image of the hero who was always very loyal to its thoughts and beliefs.
