Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ferdie
It was just very interesting that the author of the article (or was it a book?) quite extensively tried to disprove the use of the word Kali in pre-Hispanic era in order to finally conclude that the only acceptable name would be Eskrima.
|
Good point Ferdie. The Filipinos were already using swords or sticks, and the Spanish just saw it and called it ... Eskrima!
When you hear old manongs say Lapu Lapu used Eskrima to defeat Magellan they just mean they used weapons... which they did. The article makes it sound like Filipinos didn't know how to weild one and was just running with their heads cut off hoping they hit something with the sword. In a culture where your blade meant survival, with rituals of mockfighting, using it to hunt and cut through brush, build shelter, test cut and fight one another. Pretty soon you learn what works or what doesn't. Those old natives weren't wearing brass leg guards because it was mere eye candy. They knew that was one of the first places you could get cut at or use it to assist bracing your footing with...
The Spanish first described the weapons they saw using the words they were used to speaking. Only later when they got better at understanding Filipino dialects did they pick up on what some of the weapons were called by the natives.
And yes, there was no such thing as Filipinos til the latter part of the 1800's ... not the way we understand it today. It was during the revolution that the tribes, and provinces began to see a solidarity. Even the Moros or Southern Moors never thought themselves as Filipinos... according to Hurley who is quoted in the article, the Moros thought as much about the Spanish as they did the Visayans or the Tagals or the Dutch. The Moros would not even follow up a victory or a defeat in many cases. They just fought when they felt like fighting and fought whomever they wanted. They would fight the Spanish one day and someone else the next.
In fact, in that region you could have Chinese pouring molten sugar on a ship of Dutch and turning them into 'human candy', or English versus Spanish, Japanese versus Chinese... etc.
Most Spanish would not see it that way of course, because they are coming from their own POV.
--Rafael--