This past weekend I attended the Rebozo & Mexican Birth Care Workshop at the American Indian Health and Family Services center in Detroit, MI. This experience was so full - I am still absorbing and digesting all of the information and wisdom Lucia Gutierrez shared with us. It will take me some time to integrate the teachings and understand it’s role in my work as a doula.
For now, I want to share my initial thoughts, and sincerely thank our hosts at the AIHFS for putting this together and for providing snacks and meals.
I want to extend my greatest gratitude and humility to Lucia for her time, her energy, her stories and wisdom this weekend. She really gracefully illuminated the complex and rich history of the “rebozo”, and what it’s value has been for her people over many eras of history. The most important and weighty thing I learned from her this weekend is hard to articulate. Listening to her showed me that the “rebozo” has always been powerful - as a tool yes, but more so as a spiritual element of her people. Not only that, it was originally used as a form of currency in the community. It was a both a symbol as well as a real life manifestation of power. The rebozo wasn’t just a “traditional Mexican garment” - it was money, it was a resource, a way to feed your family. The craft of creating one involved many members of the community, each is individual and unique, and symbolizes connection to ancestors, and a higher power.
Then, as we all know, the colonizers of her ancestral land stole all of that power, and its symbol as a sacred and valuable element, by literally stealing all of the “rebozos” from the community, and then systematically turned them into a tool of oppression. The colonizers infused the image of the “rebozo” into their evangelism in order to more easily impose a new religion, and force them to adopt new societal roles and norms - all while attempting to erase the true history of the “rebozo” and it’s value to the indigenous community. Despite this, it was preserved for more than 500 years of colonization, with just subtle changes to the design. There are many who still keep this knowledge, and Lucia is working very hard to be sure that we understand this historical context as the “rebozo” becomes more and more popular in the United States and with non-indigenous people - especially in the birth world. The “rebozo” was never intended as a tool for pregnancy and birth, it just became one from a place of survival for her people. The techniques we see today were developed outside of this cultural and historical context I just outlined. To forget this context is to erase the power and magic and value of the “rebozo”.
As a white person, it is my work and my duty to understand and be aware of this and hold myself accountable to what that means for me in my everyday life and work. For now, I am happy to have supported the community by purchasing a “rebozo”, and paying Lucia for her time and talents over the workshop. I will have to take time to examine my own white privilege in society, as well the birth community specifically, before I can decide if I will use the “rebozo” in my work.
For now I am happy to respect, honor and cherish my beautiful new “rebozo” - and stick with just exploring it’s energetic texture and protective qualities and build a personal relationship and practice in that. In the long term I hope to keep unlearning the ways that colonialism has shaped the way we think about, talk about, and interact with birth in the modern world - and stay accountable for cultural appropriation as we move forward in support of the indigenous keepers of this knowledge. The only way to support and respect them is to recognize the ways white supremacy has stolen from them, and be accountable in our work so that we do not continue this colonization and oppression.
[*I put the word in quotations to honor the context that this is a word invented by colonizers.]
