By 1791, the French Revolution had spread to Haïti, where slaves and free blacks alike had begun demanding civil rights guaranteed in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. Enter Romaine-la-Prophétesse, a free black Dominican coffee farmer who dressed in women's clothes and claimed that the Virgin Mary was his godmother. Inspired by mystical revelations from the Holy Mother, he amassed a large and volatile following of insurgents who would go on to sack countless plantations and conquer the coastal cities of Jacmel and Léogâne.

This discussion of the cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti is the fruit of one of the most extensive ethnographical studies on religion yet conducted in the Caribbean. Rey reveals the differences between the Marian devotion of the Haitian poor and that of the Haitian elite, explains the forces that shape and underlie these differences, and explores the phenomena of Marian symbols, beliefs and practices with their correspondents in Haitian Voudou.

The military regime that ousted democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide from power in a September 1991 coup d'etat remained in control of Haiti under the leadership of General Raoul Cedras until September 1994, when a U.S.-UN military intervention paved the way for Aristide's return one month later.