![]() To create patterns and color variations in the fabric, indigenous women used the jaspe method of resist-dyeing threads before weaving. Indigenous women of Mesoamerica were the primary weavers of the first rebozos, often crafted with body-tensioned or back-strap otate looms. But the cloth garment existed in the Americas long before Spanish colonization. ![]() ![]() The word rebozo comes from the Spanish “rebozar,” to coat or to cover. Together they could archive and teach others about the rebozo. In community with each other, the women of the collective found they each had a piece of ancestral knowledge, Perla says. We would research it online, but it was all coming from that didn’t have our background.” “We tried to seek that knowledge, but it wasn’t passed down to us, even though it is absolutely part of our ancestry. But while the women knew the rebozo was central, they didn’t know much about its history. “The rebozo, reclaiming it, would pave the way,” says Perla. Their inquiry became a focus for the Cihuapactli Collective, and they found the beginning of an answer with the traditional Mexican rebozo, a long shawl worn around the head, shoulders, and waist, used by women in many global cultures to carry babies and children. In the United States, mothers tend to keep and carry babies in high tech strollers, car seats, highchairs, walkers or other paraphernalia. When the two became mothers, they wondered how to carry their babies into the daily activities of their lives. Perla Farias, a mother of twins, first met Maria in MECha (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) at Arizona State University. They represent various ancestral traditions and heritages, including Mexican, Guatemalan, Afro-Cuban, and Filipino. Maria serves as its executive director.Īmong the collective’s partners are doctors, doulas, educators, therapists, activists, artists, midwives, documentarians, healers, and elders. Today, the collective works to support families and womb health through ancestral and traditional knowledge, including various rebozo practices. “Cihuapactli” in Nahuatl derives from the words “cihuame,” meaning women, and “pactli,” meaning medicine. The group eventually became the Cihuapactli Collective. “Three here earthside and one in the spirit world, each birth was a new traumatic experience, but I had the collective, a group of women to fall back on.” The women provided Maria a support system for the births of all four of her children, she says. The next time they met, fifteen women came. Ten women gathered at a Phoenix coffee shop. In a bout of postpartum depression, she asked a few friends for support. In 2015, after losing her mother and giving birth to her second child, Maria needed help. The rebozo, says Maria del Carmen Parra Cano, not only comforts her and helps her carry her babies, but also connects her to the other women in the room, to family, to community, and to heritage. Wrapped around one woman, is a colorful shawl, or rebozo, which hugs her shoulders and drapes her knees like a celestial robe. ![]() Their tether to the ancestors is less audible, but no less vivid. “We work at the pace of our children,” one woman in the circle says, “That is how it is driven. That their children are nearby is telling. The sounds of thunder and babies and young children at play add buoyancy to their conversation. ![]() It’s a monsoon summer night and a dozen comadres sit in a circle talking, planning, and organizing in a small retreat room. ![]()
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