Marie-Madeleine Lachenais, known as Joute, was called “the President of two Presidents” and is regarded as the most politically powerful woman in the history of Haiti before the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1950. She was the mistress and political adviser of president Alexandre Sabès Pétion and president Jean-Pierre Boyer and exerted a significant influence over the affairs of state during their presidencies for a period of about thirty-six years (1807–1843).
Marie-Madeleine Lachenais was born in Arcahaie in 1778, the daughter of Marie Thérèse Fabre, an African woman, and the French officer (often described as a colonel) de Lachenais. She entered into a relationship with Alexandre Pétion, with whom she had two daughters, Cécile (born 1805) and Hersilie (born 1818). When Pétion became president in 1807, she acted as his close adviser and confidante, and she supported his choice of Jean-Pierre Boyer as his political heir.
In 1818 Pétion died, and Boyer succeeded him as the second president of the Republic of Haiti. Marie-Madeleine then became Boyer’s mistress and political adviser and had a daughter, Azéma, with him. Contemporary observers and later historians suggest that her influence could be felt in legislation and executive decisions taken between 1818 and about 1840, and one nineteenth‑century account referred to her as “the lady president of two successive presidents.” In 1838 she reportedly persuaded Boyer to remain in office when he considered resigning, and she is also credited in some sources with revealing and thwarting a planned coup against his presidency.
After Boyer was deposed in February 1843, Lachenais and her daughters—often referred to as Boyer’s family—were escorted to a ship to follow him into exile. They arrived in Kingston, Jamaica, on 13 February 1843, where she and her daughters lived on a pension from Haiti that was officially granted in the name of her daughter Cécile. Boyer is reported in various accounts to have married her, or to have had plans to marry her, shortly before her death, though this remains somewhat uncertain in the sources.
Marie-Madeleine Lachenais died in Kingston, Jamaica, shortly after her arrival, on 22 July 1843. Her life and political career stand as a striking example of a woman exercising power and influence in the highest circles of the Haitian state in the early nineteenth century.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Madeleine_Lachenais
https://oxfordaasc.com/boyerjean-pierre
