Conspiracy theories about the role of Freemasons in our history are abound. To this day, no real facts have supported the theory that somehow a global secret order with members in virtually every layer of society indeed influenced or changed the actions of its individual members. Maybe that is the function of freemasonry being secret. Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson execute orders from this secret society? Would Simon Bolivar, the independence hero of most of South America, have changed anything if he had not been a mason? Was there some kind of a code or ideology that influenced the political decisions that made our modern world? Freemasons were blamed for causing World War I (although Kaiser Wilhelm II was not a member) and World War II (according to Hitler together with international Jewry). After the Catholic Church excommunicated the secret order in 1738, Freemasons faced periodic persecution in countries all around the world. This in turn gave rise to allegations of subversiveness and undue influence on world events.
Freemasons also played an important role in the Mexican Revolution. Arnold Krumm-Heller, a German-born doctor, spy, and occultist headed the freemasonry in Mexico, while President Madero, himself a Spiritist, led the country. On a fact finding trip to Parral, Chihuahua, I discovered that another German agent, Frederico Stallforth (Felix A. Sommerfeld's infamous colleague-agent) also was a mason. His uncle had founded the lodge in Parral. The entire male Stallforth family has chairs in the lodge.
While working on my current book, I discovered that another influential force in the Mexican revolution were masons: Dictator and usurper of the Madero presidency Victoriano Huerta, co-conspirator in the counter revolution against Madero, Felix Diaz (nephew of the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz), Manuel Mondragon (former Secretary of War under Huerta) as well as an unnamed eighty followers of Huerta. When American authorities arrested him for a second time in El Paso in July 1915, he was allowed to keep his "mason charm" attached to his watch (New York Times, July 4, 1915). While Huerta never lost his "charm", newspapers had reported a month earlier that Huerta, Diaz and all his followers have been expelled from the freemasonry (The Washington Times, May 2, 1915). The group was then mounting a filibustering expedition into Mexico to depose both Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza. The freemasons of Mexico were then headed by Arnold Krumm-Heller, who at that time had joined the forces of Venustiano Carranza. It is a curious detail that the rivalry between Huerta and Carranza spilled into the secret order. What if not trying to influence the conspirators to give up their political activities was the purpose of expelling the whole reactionary lot?
From left Manuel Mondragon, Victoriano Huerta, Felix Diaz, and Aureliano Blanquet