From Rebozos to Ring Slings - Babywearing in Latin America

While caregivers around the world continue to discover babywearing for the first time, purchase their first carrier, and fall in love with the hands free bond that babywearing gives them, people have been wearing their babies for thousands of years. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, hope&plum brings you a brief history of babywearing in Latin America and links these traditional and ongoing babywearing practices with hope&plum’s carriers.

In Peru and other Andean countries in South America, indigenous people use a lliclla or manta. This square piece of fabric, sometimes woven from alpaca wool, can be worn as a cape or shawl around a woman’s shoulders and pinned in place in the front. It can also be used to carry objects such as wood, food, textiles, and other goods. But, most importantly for our purposes, it can be used for babywearing. Babies can be worn on the back with the manta tied in front. In some cultures, babies are swaddled in layers of clothing and blankets before being worn. A study was published in 1994 detailing these practices of creating a microenvironment for the baby while babywearing in the manta, allowing an infant to adapt more quickly and safely to their high altitude world.

In Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica, a rebozo is most commonly used for babywearing. It is a rectangular piece of fabric woven from cotton. Much like the manta, a rebozo can be worn throughout a person’s life for many different uses. It can be worn as a shawl, used to bind a pregnant belly, utilized during childbirth to support a birthing person’s changing positions, and folded into a blanket once baby is born. When used for babywearing, the rebozo is draped diagonally across the wearer’s body and tied in a knot at one shoulder. The baby can either be placed in the pouch on the wearer’s front or hip or the rebozo can be tied around the baby for a back carry.

While the manta is closest to the modern woven wrap, hope&plum’s ring sling – and all ring slings for that matter – can be traced back to the rebozo. Rather than a knot, ring slings have a pair of aluminum rings sewn into one end of a piece of long, basically rectangular fabric. Baby is then placed into the pouch, which can then be adjusted for a snug and safe fit. Next time you slip on your hope&plum ring sling, think back to the long tradition of babywearing that brought us here.

Cultural babywearing - traditional baby carriers. (2013, February 12). Wrap Your Baby. https://wrapyourbaby.com/cultural-babywearing/

Threads of Peru. (2017). Traditional andean clothing. Threads of Peru. https://threadsofperu.com/pages/traditional-andean-clothng

Tronick, E. Z., Thomas, R. B., & G., M. D. (1994). The manta pouch: A regulatory system for peruvian infants at high altitude. Children’s Environments, 11(2), 142–146. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41514922

Wishingrad, B. (2024). What is a rebozo baby carrier? Nurturingacrosscultures.org. https://nurturingacrosscultures.org/us/articles/64-what-is-a-rebozo-baby-carrier.html