FILIPINO MARTIAL ARTS CLASSIFICATION
By Fred Lazo

The right Filipino martial arts classification is divided only into two. These two are the old or otherwise referred to as classical arnis and modern arnis. These two are the only right categories of arnis in the Philippines based on their developments. The first book to mention the classical category is the book of Grandmaster Ernesto Presas Sr. entitled “The Art of Arnis, A modern interpretation of an Ancient Martial Art,” but he clearly expressed that the word “classical” means “old arnis,” not a separate category independent of its own.

In the book entitled “Filipino Martial Culture,” it classified arnis into the old kali, classical and modern arnis. The book fabricated these classifications and called it Filipino martial culture. How can this be called Filipino martial culture when it was just fabricated and does not agree with what the Filipinos have as classification of their own martial arts? This is changing the cultural classification of the Filipino martial arts and insisting as Filipino martial culture which will lead to misconception and this misconception will later be accepted by uninformed readers as true Filipino martial culture while in fact, it is not.

The classical arnis classification in the “Filipino Martial Culture” book was intended to insist that there is an arnis that was influenced by Spanish fencing and all arnis put under this classification are all influenced by Spanish rapier and dagger fencing which the book claims was implanted in the Island of Mactan when Magellan landed there when he tried to circumnavigate the globe, which the book claimed was done twice by Magellan. Wrong! Magellan barely made it once, with the first sailing considered that stopped where the second expedition stopped. He sailed first from Spain to the Far East and back which is not a complete circumnavigation of the world.

The second time, he made an incomplete rounding of the globe from Spain to the Philippines. If he sailed back via the route he made the second time, he could have circumnavigated the world twice, but he died in the Island of Mactan in the hands of Lapu-Lapu, unable to return home. If both expeditions were not considered together Magellan would have not circumnavigated the world because both expeditions were incomplete.

Was there really rapier and dagger influence implanted in the shore of Mactan? By that time there was no rapier and dagger because all the swords that had been retrieved from sunken Spanish galleons were two handed swords with two forks on both flat sides of the blade.Even history tells that when Magellan was showing the superiority of the Spanish armor they were using the big swords and not rapier and dagger.

Magellan ordered his men to strike the man with armor with their big swords, and when he was not wounded, he bragged that a man with armor was equivalent to 100 warriors. That explains the truth that no rapier and dagger fencing was implanted in Mactan. For the rapier and dagger to be implanted, a person should have stayed in Mactan to teach the people in Mactan and the art could have spread out. As clear as the blue sky, no one stayed there to teach the art.

The Spaniards were defeated by Lapu-Lapu in the Island of Mactan and the survivors who went to Cebu to join Rajah Humabon were mostly slaughtered because of Humabon’s fear that Lapu- Lapu will retaliate on him for conniving with the Spaniards. The Spaniards that were spared by Rajah Humabon were turned into slaves. Half of them were sold in Borneo to slave traders of whom the Spaniards were able to save a few from living the miserable life of slavery. Those that remained in Cebu lived their life time as slaves. The possibility for a Spanish slave to teach fencing is remote.

They were kept toiling the land to support the Kingdom of Humabon. Again, it would be degrading for freemen and royal blood to learn something from a slave. The reason why the big sword was the main weapon of the Spaniard lies on the fact that Spaniards distance themselves from European fencing when they were dominated by the Moslems of the Umayyad Caliphate, that lasted for 800 years, that finally ended in 1492 in their final defeat in Granada, which was even witnessed by Columbus before sailing to America. The Spaniards that came to the Philippines were still carrying the Moslem culture that was implanted in Spain for 800 years.

The Spaniards came to the Philippines 29 years after the fall of the Umayyad Caliphates that ruled Spain for eight centuries, a length of time not enough to develop a matured fencing art that could have been implanted in Mactan. The revival of fencing in Spain happened only in the 18th century when Spain finally opened herself to Europe who was far ahead in fencing compared to the retarded and disintegrated fencing knowledge of Spain caused by foreign domination. Spaniards lost their true culture handed by the barbarians of the north and the Romans.

One Spanish writer even declared that during the 800 years of Moslem domination everything disintegrated except the race. Based on these facts, how can rapier and dagger be implanted and caused influence in the Island of Mactan? It is plain lies declared out of ignorance. Or, this could have been intentionally done, for an intended purpose. It is very clear in the book “Filipino Martial Culture” that it is partial to the fabricated independent classical arnis classification to create an influence of Spanish rapier and dagger to the Filipino martial arts. This claim of the book though is contradictory.

How can Spanish fencing influence the Filipino martial arts in the 16th century when it was just revived in the 18th century? The book did not reconcile the facts before it was written nor did it do enough analysis and research to vindicate itself from possible critical scrutiny. The elite Asian martial arts magazine even endorsed the book without considering the backfire it could do to their prestige as a nucleus of mostly Ph.D. group. .