Fin

The important role of women can be seen in Haiti today, where priests and priestesses preside over a pantheon that includes numerous female iwas. Many of these was are associated with the Haitian Revolution, and are said to be based off of real historical figures. While the veracity of this claim can not be tested, the figure of these was can serve as oral testimony to the various ways in which women participated in the Revolution, for each one represents a type of revolutionary woman.

First, there is the figure of Defilee, a woman who sold goods to insurgent soldiers. In some version she may have provided their sexual needs as well, but in others she was a version. She was madly in love with Dessalines, and cared for his body after his murder. (Dayan 44) It is probable there were many Defilees: most wars have women who travel with the soldiers and sell them goods, sometimes including their bodies. Taking care of corpses was a woman's role in many African cultures, while the care for the dead body combined with virginity connects Defilee to the Virgin Mary and thus, Ezili. Defilee is said to have joined the insurgency as a result of rape by her master, thus showing a collective memory which credits rape by white males as being a major motivation for women who joined the insurgency, and which may further explain the nature of the sexual punishment insurgent women sometimes devised for their white captors. (Dayan 40) Defilee's name comes from the fact that whenever the soldiers would stop, she would tell them to march once more (defilez), and they would march. (Dayan 44) This shows the important role of women in encouraging the soldiers, and also that women were respected enough to be listened to. There is also the iwa who is said to have fed bullets to Ogu-Dessaline's cannon during the revolution is another testament to women's roles providing soldiers with supplies; there are records of insurgent women trading sex with French soldiers in exchange for bullets and ammunition. Thus, the voodoo traditions of today contain traces of the insurgent women of history.

Then there is the more quiet power exercised by women: Dessaline's wife is known to have used her influence on him to save the lives of many whites, and captors of the insurgency reported male slaves' wanting better conditions for their family. (Dayan 30) Defilee is said to have protested the actions of the men who murdered Dessalines, while another captive recorded a woman for upbraiding insurgents for their actions. The ability of women to entice, cajole, and convince the insurgent men in their lives should not be underestimated, or relegated to the margins of history: That Dessaline's wife was heeded, or that Defilee's protests are part of Haitian traditions until today, speaks to the effect of words of women. These words would have been especially powerful when they came from women fulfilling a religious role, for then their voices were the voices of the was themselves.

Perhaps the importance of women, as history's tendency to overlook that importance, is best preserved in a legend that Dessalines-Ogu was possessed by the Virgin Mary at the moment he commanded for the white to be torn out of the tricolor flag: The ability to transcend gender through possession, and the power of women to influence men is recorded in this legend, where it is a woman who causes Dessaline's actions. Yet the ability of a woman to affect history herself, without male mediation, remains silenced. It may be the female spirit that possesses Dessalines, yet power is reserved for the male body. (Dayan 52) This Virgin Mary is said to have spoken French and Congo through Dessalines at that time, connecting her to Ezili, who is African (Congo is a term used for generic African languages used in voodoo, though there also is an actual Congo Ezili) and often speaks in French, as part of her coquettish pretensions. (Dayan 52) Thus, Haiti is left with the blue of of Ezili and the Virgin Mary, and red, the color of blood, the loss of virginity as she matures to become an independent nation.

This independence brought freedom to a multitude of men and women. Those formerly enslaved women had faced a variety of obstacles not faced by their male counterparts, but by empowering themselves through religion, they were able to help participate in the movement that brought them freedom.