The conflated image of the warrior goddess has such
powerful political significance in Haiti any attempt to dissociate Our Lady
from it is a potentially dangerous proposition. The following excerpt from the website of a
contemporary movement in Haiti, the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) describes
how Haitian freedom fighters intentionally transformed the myth of Ezili. The organization uses inflammatory language
to call upon her to empower the people, in particular black women of Haiti, in the
fight for lasting freedom and economic retribution for centuries of enslavement
under European and American dominance.
“The power of myth, metaphor and archetypal psychology are
no longer disputed. If we were to look upon Ezili Dantò as a major
African-Haitian archetype, myth, metaphor or narrative and note Vodun’s major
role in the Haitian revolution and that during the Haitian revolution, this
archetype was the only spirit principle or hero who was injured, who actually
lost her voice, then it would be easier to understand why our work at Ezili’s
HLLN has used Vodun lexicon to describe modern pathologies and given the great
mother Goddess, Ezili Dantò, her tongue back. Supposedly, after Bwa Kay Iman,
in the course of the war for liberation and freedom, Ezili Dantò was the only
higher spirit and the only female symbol of love and nurture that was
mutilated. Her tongue was cut out. And thus, in some sections of Haiti when
this intangible, invisible, untouchable and eternal energy manifests into form
through a living Haitian being, it can’t talk. This generation of Haitians at
Ezili’s HLLN is not willing to continue putting life into that particular
neocolonial metaphor. At Ezili’s HLLN, our work intends to change the world,
Haiti’s world, by changing the metaphors and colonial narratives and uplift the
warrior mother Goddess Ezili Dantò’s spirit, Dessalines’ three Ideals and the
Haitian paradigm for universal freedom. We understand the psychological
warfare, neocolonialism, racism and paternalism that would silence the feminine
warrior, Ezili Dantò and the role archetypes and archetypal psychology plays in
the liberation, life, values and culture of a people."
