Rebenque is the shared name in South American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese for a type of whip used by gauchos in South America.
The word derives from the French "raban", Dutch "ra-band", from "ra" 'yard-beam' + band. 
Originally it was the rope that ties the sail to the yard, but soon came to mean a whip made of leather or tarred hemp, used to punish sailors (compare rope's end). 
Especially in Argentina, it is the traditional riding, fighting, and punishing whip of the gaucho (the Argentine, Uruguayan and Southern Brazilian cowboy). It consists of a rawhide wrapped wooden handle about long with a thong made of a wide rawhide strap a little longer than the handle. The handle is topped by a knob, and have a wrist strap. It can be embellished with gold and silver.
Types.
The basic rebenque is composed of a rawhide covered wooden handle long, and differently from other riding whips, a rawhide strap about wide and a little longer than the handle. The strap can be double, sewn at the edges, and could have the point unsown, for making a slapper. It has a wrist strap at the top of the handle. 
The wide strap made the rebenque an instrument less severe on the horse than the European riding crop.
As the gaucho was never far from the horse, the rebenque was always on him. When not in use, he made a knot with the strap and held the rebenque lazily by the wrist strap with the middle fingers of his hand, or hung it from the handle of his facón knife (as he used the large knife almost horizontally at his back, held by the belt or waistband, the handle protruded from his right side). The rebenque was used also for fighting, as a weapon by itself, when the fight did not merit a knife, or with the strap rolled on his left hand and the handle hanging, as a secondary weapon to the knife in his right hand. 
Of course, it was also used for domestic punishments, and for quasi-judicial chastisement (corporal punishments were outlawed in Argentina, at least in the books, from 1813 on, but the country was very large, sparsely populated and not totally under government control, not unlike the American West). A couple of lashes with the rebenque on the bare legs were widely used as a punishment for children, even in the urban areas.
As an equestrian culture, not only the poor gauchos used the rebenque, and there were (and still are) elaborate versions, with silver knobs and ferrules for the ranch owners (estancieros) and prominent citizens.
Besides the common rebenque described above, there were several other types.
Sources and references.
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