By Isla Quinn
A rebozo is a long rectangle of cloth. That is the whole object, and it does an astonishing amount of work.
Wikipedia says the first written mention of the rebozo dates to 1572, by Friar Diego Durán, and that it emerged among the lower, mestizo classes in the early colonial period, though the exact date is unclear. By the eighteenth century, according to the article, it was worn by all women except nuns and those of the uppermost classes, a description it attributes to the Count of Revillagigedo. It also records that in 1625 Thomas Gage noted Black and mixed-race people wearing rebozos instead of Spanish mantillas.
A garment with many jobs
The Mexican Revolution gave the rebozo a place in popular memory. The article says the Adelitas wrapped babies and weapons inside rebozos at checkpoints. By the end of the nineteenth century it had become an indispensable garment and an important handcraft. Frida Kahlo, MarĂa FĂ©lix, Lila Downs and Margarita Zavala are listed as prominent modern wearers, and the character La India MarĂa is described as heavily associated with it. Use in cities has diminished, the article adds, because of associations with indigenous groups and poverty. Sales double before September 16, Independence Day.
The cloth itself
Rebozos range from 1.5 to 3.5 meters long, Wikipedia says. Traditionally woven ones take 30 to 60 days to make, and the designs involve anything from 15 to 200 steps depending on complexity. Rayon rebozos average 3,000 warp threads, silk ones 3,800. Rayon was created in France in 1886, the article says, which made decorative versions more affordable. We have not checked these figures against a second source, and the sources do not say which are woven on a backstrap loom and which on a pedal loom.
Tenancingo’s article gives a hint about the looms: rebozos have been made there since the colonial period on both indigenous backstrap looms and Spanish pedal looms.
Santa MarĂa del RĂo
The town has a slogan, Cuna del rebozo, cradle of the rebozo. Wikipedia says weaving was introduced shortly after the conquest, that the town achieved fame by the seventeenth century and that silk was introduced in the eighteenth century by JunĂpero Serra. Widespread production came in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The same article lists the Escuela del Rebozo, established in 1953, which won the Premio Nacional de Artes y Tradiciones Populares in 2002, and says the first National Rebozo Contest was held in San Luis PotosĂ in 2004.
Tenancingo
Tenancingo, in the State of Mexico, is the other name in the rebozo story. Wikipedia places it 48 kilometers from Toluca, at 2,020 meters, with a municipal population of 104,677 in 2020, and says it was founded in 1551 and gained municipal status in 1825. Of its rebozo weavers, it says, about 35 remain, down from about 200 seventy years ago. A weaver, Evaristo Borboa, received a National Award in 2014. The article describes cut flowers as the town’s largest source of income, and says a first National Rebozo Contest was established in 2014 and draws more than 3,500 visitors a year.
Two articles, two first contests: 2004 in San Luis PotosĂ and 2014 in Tenancingo. They may be different events, and we have not checked either with the organizers.
Tied before it is woven
The patterned rebozos use a technique called ikat, known in Mexico as jaspe or reservado. The V&A’s article on traditional Mexican dress describes it as tie-dyeing selected warp threads before they are woven: makers bind threads in sets, dip them in dye baths and repeat with new sections for additional colors. It describes the rebozo as long and rectangular, woven with cotton or silk on backstrap or treadle looms, with the warp threads knotted at both ends to form the fringe. It places cotton rebozos in treadle-loom workshops in Tenancingo and silk ikat rebozos in Santa MarĂa del RĂo.
A 1988 paper on the jaspe rebozo, presented to the Textile Society of America, gives the dimensions as 6 to 12 feet long and 24 to 34 inches wide, about three-quarters woven with the remainder fringe. It says ikat may have been known in pre-contact Mesoamerica, while other resist techniques were definitely used. It describes popular patterns named Aztecas and palomitas, the latter blue with white speckles, and says a late nineteenth-century Aztecas pattern is no longer produced at its original scale. We have not checked the paper’s claims against a second source, and it is more than thirty years old.
What old writers saw
The same paper lists early observers. A 1582 ordinance, it says, forbade mestizos, Black people and mulattos from wearing Indian dress. Thomas Gage in 1624 described a cotton mantle of divers colors worn by mestizas, which sits one year from the Wikipedia date of 1625 for the same observation. In 1763 Francisco de AjofrĂn noted that nearly every woman owned a paño de rebozo, and in 1839 Frances CalderĂłn de la Barca saw women wearing long colored cotton scarves. The paper adds that the artist Dr. Atl suggested the rebozo could serve as a national flag. Those are one paper’s citations, and we have not read the original travel accounts.
What the numbers say about survival
The Rebozo article says there are only 50 weavers in the entire state of Jalisco. Tenancingo is down to about 35. Those are small numbers for a garment with a three-century history, and both come from Wikipedia without dates for the counts. We cannot say how current they are.
Silk, rayon, cotton
Wikipedia lists silk and rayon in its figures, and the sources do not give a full account of the fibers used today. Ask what a rebozo is made of, and whether the maker made the cloth or finished it. A rebozo that took 30 to 60 days may be priced very differently from one that took less, and the sources give price ranges in pesos without dates, so we are not quoting them.
Seeing it made
We have not confirmed which weavers in Santa MarĂa del RĂo or Tenancingo accept visitors, and we are not naming one. If you travel to either town, ask at a local museum or the municipal office, and ask to see a loom and a finished piece side by side.
What to ask
Ask who wove it and where. Ask what fiber it is, how long it took and whether the design was done by hand or by machine. Ask whether the piece is meant to be worn or displayed.
Then wrap it round your shoulders, if you are allowed, and see how far a long rectangle goes.
Roam first. Shop later.