Ezili Dantor

Èzili Dantò or Erzulie Dantor is the main loa (or lwa) or senior spirit of the Petro family in Haitian Vodou.

[5] Another distinction between them is that Freda is traditionally light-skinned (though this has begun to shift in devotional art)[6] and relatively wealthy, indicative of her status as an upper-class woman.

[6] Other stories in the religion note that Èzili Dantò is nonspeaking as a result of her tongue being cut out by other Haitian Revolutionaries who feared she would betray them.

[4] Èzili Dantò only utters syllables during possession because of this, and is capable of becoming extremely angry and vengeful, to the point that she is considered evil, though she is not inherently so.

[6] In Zora Neale Hurston’s Haiti and Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ezili's Danto's rage is described as "violent reminder to the folk that their passive faith in Euro-Americans, or Christianity, to determine their fate is misguided.

Considered to be a fearless warrior in the Petro Nation (Petwo Nanchon in Haitian Creole), Dantor has been popular among single mothers during the 1980s and 1990s in Haiti and Dominican Republic.

The original association of Ezili Dantor with the Black Madonna of Częstochowa is hypothesized to be from copies of the icon brought to Haiti by Polish soldiers sent by order of Napoleon Bonaparte, to subdue the then still ongoing Haitian Revolution.

[11] As a consequence of this action, during Jean-Jacques Dessalines's 1804 massacre, which took place shortly after the Haitian victory; the Poles were left alive and granted citizenship of the newly-founded Republic of Haiti.