Lautaro Lodge - Name

Name

Although the lodge is most commonly known as "Lautaro", it did not employ that name during all of its existence. The name made reference to Mapuche leader Lautaro, which made sense in Santiago de Chile in the 1817-1820 period, but not in Buenos Aires in 1812 and much less in Europe. Historian Vicente Fidel López points that "Lautaro" was really a masonic code meaning "Expedition to Chile", but similarly, Chile was not a military target for Buenos Aires in 1812. By that point, Chile was still in the Patria Vieja period, and would not fall into royalist control until the 1814 Disaster of Rancagua. Although the secrecy makes difficult to investigate the purposes or even the name, Alcibíades Lappas considers instead that the lodge was named "Lodge of Rational Knights" in 1812, just like the Cádiz one, and that San Martín renamed it "Lautaro" when he recreated it in 1815, after the fall of Alvear.