Arts

Eskrima: More than just sticks

It is said that concealed in the absolute darkness of moonless nights, with only the bright, red, glowing embers of the tips of their sticks as signs of animation, they would practice and pass on their arcane skill in an esoteric art.  But only to those who they deemed worthy to learn.

It is also said that on Sunday afternoons, tipsy but never drunk while doing rounds of tuba, they

would openly demonstrate, teach, and learn from each other as they improved each other’s skill, technique, and the art itself by sharing what they knew to any one who would watch and listen.

How do you reconcile these two faces of the eskrima master?  How can something supposedly secret be so blatantly displayed to an indiscriminate audience?

But then you may be asking, “What on earth is eskrima, in the first place?!?!”

Do you know the Filipino martial art that most people now call “Arnis?”  That’s eskrima.

It is another word for the same thing.  It comes from the Spanish word for fencing and, traditionally, it is what we Bisaya call the martial art.  In recent years outside of the country, however, they have come to be referred to under the less exotic name of FMA, or Filipino Martial Arts.  But what’s in a name?

When most people are asked to define eskrima, the usual answer is that it is the Filipino art of stickfighting.  It is the simplest answer and it is true.  And for this reason it is dismissed as not a real martial art.
How hard can it be to swing a stick?  The answer is very, very hard if you were to ask Master Sullivan Grandeza.

Master Van is a fourth degree international master instructor in Soo Bahk Do, a first degree head instructor in Taekwondo, a first dan blackbelt in judo with the Philippine Amateur Judo Association, and a first dan blackbelt in aikido with the Seiwakai Aikido Federation.  He is the training center director and chief instructor of his own gym, the Katutubong Mandirigma Institute of Martial Arts and Virtues (KATMA-IMAV), which one may find along the Dampas-Mansasa Road.

And he is also an eskrimador; proficient in 28 styles of the art. For him to say that eskrima is difficult is, thus, no mean thing.

First of all, eskrima doesn’t use just sticks.  It is a martial art that trains its practitioners to handle any situation and any weapon they can lay their hands on, bladed or not.  We are talking kampilan, pinute, batangas, garrote, olisi, baston, staff, sword, knife, nunchaku, and finally the empty hand.  Yes, the empty hand.

In eskrima, the weapon is just a tool.  It is used to train the eye, the hand, and the body to see the attack before it comes and to react accordingly.  An ability which Master Van says is second nature to eskrima masters.

This is an art where even combat-tested practitioners belittle their own skills as “taghap-taghap lang” and only a few lay uncontested claim to the title of Master.  Where you must learn how to fight defensively against one who has every intent to kill you.  Where to strike back is a last resort because you know your skills can be lethal.  This is the true face of eskrima.

And of this art, Master Van acknowledges “Tio” Lumantas, an 80-year-old man of Balilihan, as a true eskrima master of Bohol.

Coming from Master Van, that’s not a compliment.  It is a statement of truth.

Lumantas is a living legend sought by foreign martial artists all over the world just so they can learn a little of what he knows.  And the rest of us can only contemplate how truly impressive this eskrimador must be.
And it is sad that a martial art so rooted in our culture and of such historical significance has been overshadowed by other disciplines and few have the interest to pursue or the heart to excel at it.  In a recent world championship tournament for arnis, the champion for forms was an Australian woman.

How do we reconcile the two faces of the eskrima master?  That of a practitioner of an esoteric art and that of a public spectacle?  The answer, my grade school history teacher says, is that in those public spectacles on Sunday afternoons nothing secret was ever revealed.  No true eskrima master would.

If you ask around whether there is any one today who had learned, is practicing, and is teaching eskrima in the traditional way, you would mostly be told, “I don’t know.”  There would, however, be informative and amusing accounts of how the art was practiced and taught in the past.  How footwork was practiced on a triangle of coconut shells.  How master and pupil, at arm’s length, would trade blows in a small circle inscribed in the earth or on the fallen trunk of a coconut tree.  How on moonless nights and with “lukay sa lubi nga gabaga ang tumoy” they would spar.  And of the consequent joke that at dawn “mag-ihapanay sila sa mga paso.”

And, finally, of somber graduation rituals where the master would pass on a pair of kamagong sticks to his pupil and, for one last time, they would spar, this time as equals, the tips of the kamagong flaming red in the dark of night.

Tags: arnis, bohol, eskrima, Katutubong Mandirigma Institute of Martial Arts and Vir