The Politics of Patron Sainthood in Haiti: 500 Years of Iconic Struggle

Abstract

In many countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion, personal religious and collective national identity are extensively conditioned by the imagery and names of a national patron saint. Two of the most striking examples of this phenomenon are the cults of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland and Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. The shaping influence that each of these Marian icons has on what it means to be Polish or Mexican and Catholic, however understood, and the strength of Polish and Mexican Catholic faith in the Virgin Mary's oversight of their nations can hardly be overstated. The roles of Czestochowa and Guadalupe are contested, however, in both the religious and political histories of each nation, and similar iconic struggles have been waged in most other "Catholic" countries, as Paul C. Johnson explains:

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