The rebozo has a history that goes back many centuries and is a wonderful example of what the meeting of cultures can produce. In the days before the conquest, both men and women used a kind of simple shawl, a lienzo, both for warmth and for carrying bundles. It was woven in backstrap looms from maguey and henequen fibers and there are many examples of them in various codices. Soon after the Spaniards arrived, they insisted that the Mexican women wear a head covering for entering the churches. Out of this necessity combined with the Spaniards' imported weaving skills came the rebozo (the word comes from the verb rebozar, meaning to cover up), a multi-purpose covering initially woven of just cotton and then later on also of silk and wool, and still to this day a symbol of mexicanidad worn proudly by Mexican women of all social standings.

Decades ago I had the pleasure of knowing a stunning young Mexican woman from Tenancingo in the state of Mexico. She had met a U.S. artist, married him and moved far from her native land to a small town in Massachusetts. She adapted to her new life quickly and easily, but one thing she never gave up were her rebozos which she wore with enviable style.

REBOZO MECCA

Little did I know at the time that Tenancingo was, and still is, one of Mexico's most important centers for the weaving of rebozos. For centuries hundreds of families, many of Matlatzincan ancestry, have been involved in this traditional handicraft, producing works of unparalled elegance. While there are stores that sell rebozos in Tenancingo, where they are most evident is at the huge public market on any day of the week and especially and appealingly on the Sunday market days. Then dozens of vendors, mostly the women who do the final knotting of the fringes of the rebozos, stand outside the markets and ply their wares, offering rebozos in a multitude of lengths, colors and patterns. The rebozos come in four lengths, depending on their use and the size of the women who will wear them: completo (often used to carry a baby on the back ), 3/4's size, mediano, and small ones called ratoncitos (ideal to wear as scarves). The traditional colors of Tenancingo rebozos are combinations of a white background with cream, blue, grey, beige, brown and black patterns.

The patterned rebozos are woven from cotton and were formerly known as rebozos de bolita as the cotton came in balls rather than skeins or cones. A more recent type of rebozo is one made from a synthetic called artisela and referred to as a rebozo reservista. These are used more for formal occasions and come in exquisite solid colors such as fantastic, bright hues of red, green, orange or more subtle shades of violet and blue. There is also the very special rebozo de aroma which is black and often used as a shroud. The name comes from the fact that the black dye has a strong unpleasant smell so the dyed cotton is later soaked in a mixture of orange leaves, rose petals, sage, rosemary and other woodsy plant materials, all of which give the rebozo a long-lasting agreeable aroma.

FASTIDIOUS PROCESS

The rebozos are traditionally woven by men on big looms that require a large degree of strength. The process of setting up the looms for weaving is laborious and complicated and takes years of practice to get it right. The cotton for the patterned rebozos is dyed in a centuries-old process called ikat which is called resist dyeing in English. It basically means that the cotton is knotted and then tie-dyed to set up a marbled pattern. It is something that is best understood by seeing the procedure being performed first-hand.

What sets the Mexican, and especially the Tenancingo, rebozo apart from shawls from other countries, is the very fine work of the endings, called flecos, puntas or rapacejos.

When finished, the woven rebozo is removed from the loom with a few feet of threads hanging from each end. These threads, anywhere from 1,800 to over 5,000 of them, are then imaginatively and intricately worked into knotted patterns, something like macrame. The most typical patterns are those with dolls, flowers, ducks, deer or geometric designs. Sometimes a name is worked in. The work is almost exclusively done by women, known as empuntadoras, and can take weeks or even months to do. There are only a handful left of rebozo weavers who use the ancient backstrap loom, called a telar de cintura or telar de otate. Since they can only make one rebozo at a time, versus the many that can be woven on a large loom, the work is costly and time consuming. But it also allows for more originality in patterns and you will therefore find one of a kind rebozos when woven in this way.

LABOR OF LOVE

One such weaver is Don Isaac Ramos who lives and works in Malinalco, a 20 minute drive from Tenancingo. Now 83 years old, he has been weaving since he was 10 when he started to learn the trade from his family of weavers. He rises at 5 and works for 12 hours a day, every day of the week, to produce on average two rebozos a week. He does all the steps of the process himself from mixing the dyes and dyeing the cotton to setting up the warp with the thousands of strands to painting on the pattern to the final weaving, hours and hours of labor. Or, as he says, "mucho tiempo, poca ganancia" (so much time, so little profit), although his rebozos have a considerably higher price than the more standard ones of Tenancingo.

But it's all done with much patience and calm, as well as a huge love and devotion to his art. He works with many known patterns, all of which have names such as cacahuate, arco negro or palomitas, but he also invents many patterns which he says simply pop into his head and his fingers practically work on their own. As well, he and his daughter Camelia, who does some of the fleco work (the rest is farmed out to local empuntadoras), have access to the wonderful old rebozos owned by the Franz Mayer Museum and they study them for ideas. They are both very concerned about the disappearance of this highly skilled art and are doing what they can to interest and train other family members in keeping up the tradition.

If you would like to track down Sr. Ramos in Malinalco, he and Camelia have a small shop about 1/2 a block down from the zocalo at Guerreno. You can also watch him weave at his workshop behind the gas station at Galeana (Tel. 714-147-0383). For Spanish speakers, he has a wealth of stories to tell about the use of the rebozo. One interesting comment he made is that until quite recently the rebozo was thought of as a symbol of purity and no self-respecting woman left the house without her rebozo. And if a young man snatched a rebozo from a young woman, then the woman considered herself to belong to that man. A good book on the subject is Rebozos de la Colección de Robert Everts, coedited by the Franz Mayer Museum and Artes de Mexico and available at many museum bookstores.

Vicky Cowal is a weekly contributor to The Herald. VickyCowal@prodigy.net.mx