Point South Mexico - Real Estate and Lifestyle Magazine

An important part of the indigenous cultures of Mexico, are the traditional rebozos (shawls). These are worn by the women strolling across the small Michoacán plaza, matched by the bright confetti showering their coffee-coloured hair, festively completed with their lime green, burnt orange, and ocean-tinted skirts.

As I watched,while local villagers danced to the music of a live band, a young woman adjusted her hair over an aqua blue rebozo, and spoke to a friend draped in a vivid purple piece over a yellow blouse and pink skirt. Meanwhile, a young girl pulled a small boy along while carrying a load of belongings in the cobalt-blue shawl over her back.

Rebozos have long been a part of the indigenous cultures of  Mexico. They paint México with an extensive palette of colours, striking a majestic pose in the country’s streets, plazas, and marketplaces, seducing the attention of visitors from throughout the world with a carnival of tints and hues. Many historians date the rebozo to pre-Columbian times; today, Mexican artisans still use backstrap looms to weave their pieces, maintaining a living connection with centuries of ancestors, while factories produce machine-made rebozos for sale at a much lower cost. Ceremonial rebozos are adorned--some with a hem of playful feathers or glistening white diamond-shaped tassels of articela (a sort of manmade silk) wrapped around splashes of flaming orange.

According to the indigenous cultures of Mexico traditions, “The rebozo is a symbol of a woman’s pride and dignity,” says Cecilia Bautista Caballero, 68, one of the premier rebozo makers in Ahuiran, Michoacán. “For others, it’s just an object of luxury. Now many people use the rebozo only for fashion.” For many other women, the shawls have a diverse list of practical uses. At the guitar festival in Paracho, a young woman carried her two-year-old daughter in a rebozo while waiting for a friend. The child appeared quite comfortable with the arrangement; sound asleep against her mother’s back, her legs dangling out the sides. At a July festival in San José de Gracía, women used their rebozos to protect themselves from the rain as they continued dancing throughout the afternoon.

“The familiar black and blue-striped rebozo is equal to blue denim,” said Jennifer Rose, an expat living in Morelia. “I was in a workshop where they made clothing from rebozo material. It’s the equivalent of making dresses or T-shirts out of denim,” said Rose, who has lived in México for many years. “Sometimes they’ll use a rebozo to wrap up things, kind of a knapsack, an early fanny pack. You could probably use one as a fan belt for your car. I saw one used as a baby crib tied between two objects. You see them tied around Cocuchas (hand-formed pots) as a decoration. I’ve seen people use them as tablecloths or table runners.”

On the second floor of the Casa de las Artesanias in Morelia, María Esperanza Valencia Mora gives demonstrations of her craft. Evidence of her imaginative and industrious nature filled the small room: fragile silvery shawls, delicate cherry red pieces, and fine pink covers (perfect for dressing up but you don’t want to carry babies in them) hung on one side of the room, while thick white cotton rebozos and sturdy black and blue pieces (good for carrying loads) adorned the other. She began tying tassels for the hem of a rebozo; within minutes, the repasejo formed a playful web of aqua, violet, viridian green, and pale yellow zigzagging along the bottom edge of the shawl.

Another morning, the 53-year-old artisan unrolled her telar de cintura (backstrap loom), to reveal a fine cream-colored rebozo. She inserted her hands into the shed (web of long threads) from both sides and meticulously counted threads, then used the batten to press down the weft, creating the intricate x and oval designs that would make this a luxurious piece. “My mother taught me,” said the Michoacán native. “It’s passed from my ancestors. I have my own myth. If I am talking, my hands do it very easily. My hands know, my hands will make the magic.”

A visit to Cecilia Bautista Caballero’s workshop in Ahuiran one Saturday afternoon found her sewing rooster feathers into a black cotton rebozo for a customer in México City. She pulled out the webbed hem of a black cotton rebozo, two large stones holding the fabric in place on a wooden table as she inserted the fuzzy quill of a black rooster feather. Peering closely with small penetrating eyes, her tiny hands eased a needle effortlessly through the tip, looping black thread around the feather and the fabric to fasten them together. The entire rebozo would take two months to complete.

“The feathers are sent from the states,” said Cecilia, gesturing toward a bundle of restless rooster feathers; the dusky light oozing into the workshop caught glimpses of iridescent emerald and rusty red hiding in the tar-complected plumes, unmasked by subtle movements. “The ones from here are too small.”

Cecilia, with beaded necklaces falling below her white blouse and gold earrings dangling about her neck, moved with a commanding grace about her workshop, giving no ground to the mild involuntary shake of her face, a disability that didn’t extend to her hands. With matter-of-fact honesty she discussed the craft she’s practiced since she was eight years old. “I most like to design my own rebozos. I like dying the cotton, the whole process.” She already has a design in mind for the Day of the Dead competition in late October and early November in Pátzcuaro. “It’s going to be pink. I will start in September. I design it first in my head. I write down the colours, how long will be the repasejo, if it’s going to have feathers.”

“I was in a workshop where they made clothing from rebozo material. It’s the equivalent of making dresses or T-shirts out of denim,” —Jennifer Rose

Where did she learn to make these bold articles of adornment? “A long time ago, my grandmother taught me how to put in the feathers and how to make dyes from natural ingredients. I use cochineal (a small bug that creates red dye), cáscaras (seed shells) from the pines and walnuts, cempasuchitl (marigold) flowers, avocado seeds, and the leaves of the weeping willow. She showed me a bag of pomegranate skins, saying,”I have to boil the cáscaras (peels) and leave them in the water for one month to ferment. Then I remove the cáscaras and boil it again with piloncillo (raw sugar), vinegar, and lemon to make the color stick, then I can put in the cotton.”

She handed me a bolt of tin-coloured cotton thread with the texture of straw; she had dyed the thread with the rapturous orange marigold flowers placed on graves during Day of the Dead observances. A bolt of thread dyed with pomegranate skins was soft as wool and glinted like silver. Another treated with the shells of evergreen oak seeds had a soft pink tint. Four bolts of thread, she said, make one rebozo.

Cecelia tied one end of a hemp harness to the end bar of the backstrap loom, wrapping it around her waist, and fastened the other end. Then she unrolled the loom to reveal pulsating arteries of colour: maroon, candy apple red and aqua blue, silvery green, and luxuriant yellow. The entire apparatus stretched out like a glorious hammock constructed of rainbows, its colours empowered by the simplicity of their birth. Each vein of hand-dyed silver thread that ran through the shed endowed the rebozo with a more powerful breath of life as she bequeathed a fragment of her family’s soul into the piece. The whispery mantra of the batten pushing the new weft securely in place seemed to release a persistent echo from the past, revealing a memory that still breathes in every piece of fabric forged by Cecilia’s hands.

Both the practical working rebozo and the delicate shawls, some of which are so fine they can be pulled through a wedding ring appear to have secured a long future in México, but will this piece of Mexican history migrate to Canada or the United States? Rose isn’t sure. “North of the border, among the Mexicans that migrate, I think the first generation will try to fit in, wear polyester, shop at discount stores. Ten years later, grandma may visit from the old country, and she might wear the rebozo. It would take another generation, maybe a generation and a half, and then they will see the rebozo as an art piece.”