Ruana

Similar to other poncho-like garments in Latin America, a ruana is basically a very thick, soft and sleeveless square or rectangular blanket with an opening in the center for the head to go through with a slit down the front to the hem.

The ruanas worn by the native Muisca (Chibcha) were apparently made of wool and knee-long, well-suited to the low temperatures of the region where they were used not only as a piece of garment but also as a blanket for use in bed or to sit on as a cushion of sorts.

An 1856 watercolor shows an indigenous man in the Cordillera Occidental of Colombia weaving a ruana using a large foot-pedaled loom.

[3] Other scholars argue that the modern ruana doesn't seem to have evolved from these nor it shows continuity from the regional pre-Hispanic garments,[4] rather the ruana appears to have been introduced after the Spanish conquest by the uprooted foreign Quechua yanakuna[5] slave-servants belonging to the defunct Inca Empire who were brought by the local Spanish hacendados in order to work the lands during the early Colonial period.

In Venezuela, before the "Andean hegemony", the ruana or blanket was used by the entire population as a garment to protect themselves from the sun in the hot lands or as a garment to protect themselves from the cold in the highlands, as noted by Ramón Páez in "Wild Scenes in South America; or life in the Venezuelan llanos" and Captain Vowels in "las sabanas de Barinas" «...They used a thick wool blanket to keep the body cool and humid during the day and warm at night (...) the usual thing was to wear a double blanket, what we now call reversible, formed with overlapping fabrics: dark blue and red intense.

For the humid days they used the blue color outwards; and on very sunny days, they would turn the ruana so that the red color was out.»«...This coat is given the name of blanket or jacket, which consists of a square of cloth, with a double red and blue cap, with the collar in the center.»In the Venezuelan Andes they were used without discrimination by all the population, which fascinated the German painter Ferdinand Bellermann.