"Uruguay's socialist President Tabare Vazquez is a Mason, and according to certain sources so is Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's leftist president...

"We don't appear in public like a political party..." IPS was told by Victor Higuera, the grand master of the [Masonic] lodge in Venezuela. President Chavez, a former lieutenant-colonel, served in the army division headed up by Higuera, a retired army general.

Masonic leaders meeting at the Bolivarian Masonic Confederation in Panama in August [2005] proclaimed that "Masonry as an order is essentially progressive, and therefore it is one of our vital concerns to participate in the vanguard of processes of social change."

In the 18th century several Masons were prime movers in the struggle for independence from Spain, including Simon Bolivar of Venezuela, Bernardo O'Higgins of Chile, and Jose de San Martin of Argentina."

-- Diego Cevallos, IPS News