Iemanjá, Oxum and Mami Wata – the birth of one truly ‘creole’ icon of the twenty-first century?

Comparing the post-colonialMamiWata cult in West Africawith the Caribbean water deities during the Middle Passage and on the slave plantations, van Stipriaan states that

the Mothers of Water helped people to find a new individuality and at the same time created a new ‘we’ in a context in which most people were ‘others’, and as a reaction to a dominant culture, be it colonial or a (westernised) global culture.