Yes it played a role. "As professors in Mexico with research interests in Freemasonry, we are presented with peculiar but interesting problems. Freemasonry in Mexico is very secret indeed. Its public image is not what it may enjoy in small town America where the Rainbow Girls put on a pancake breakfast or the local Shrine club has a joint meeting with the Knights of Columbus. In Latin America, Freemasonry is extremely political, often virulently anticlerical, and controversial. So gathering its documents and translating them can be akin to rummaging through the CIA dustbins in Langley, Virginia. The linking of the Revolution to Masonry, such as in the De Los Rios speech, is commonplace in Masonic orations and raises the question as to what the function of Freemasonry has been in Mexico. Without presenting a meticulous analysis, it can be noted that Mexican Masonry from the Revolution until now is, whatever else it might be, a political pressure group. Its depiction by De Los Rios as a white path, i.e., an unsullied road to spiritual fulfillment, is misleading. Indeed, during the Reform and early Independence stages of Mexican history, the different Masonic rites were in effect political parties (Escoseces and Yorkinos). But by the time of the Revolution, the lodges were not parties but lobbies. De Los Rios argues that Masonry made the Revolution. This is a tough proposition to prove. What can certainly be said is that the institution had an active role within the Revolution. There is not much evidence that the Masonic path was consistently one of kindness and disinterestedness. President Madero is a case in point. He was an active brother.(4) He belonged to Loyal Lodge Number 15. His great mistake when he became President after Díaz went into exile was to rely on fellow Masons whose sympathies were far less with reform than with the old regime. These disloyal brothers(5), despite all the Masonic oaths which supposedly bound them to help a brother, stimulated his opposition and the conspiracies against him. In 1913 he was murdered, possibly with the contrivance of fellow Masons." http://www.paulrich.net/publications/two_lines_spring_1995.html