Esgrima Criolla (Gaucho Knife Fighting)
Creole knife fencing of the gauchos from the Río de la Plata. According to La Nación and Domenech, a duel was more about marking the opponent's face than killing him.
Quick Facts
Character & Origin
Training
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Esgrima Criolla (Gaucho Knife Fighting)
Esgrima criolla is the knife fencing of the gauchos, rural criollos of the Río de la Plata region. According to Desocio's study (2017), it dates back to before independence and developed mainly among people seen as marginal, barbarian and uncivilized. La Nación (2008) writes that its technique was not defined by a formal school like European fencing but followed instinct. We have not found a founder in the sources. According to La Nación, the weapon in the duel was a facón or a daga. The sources disagree on the length of the facón. Desocio gives roughly 30 cm, Domenech (2008) 15 to 18 inches and Wikipedia 25 to 51 cm. According to both Slatta and La Nación, the other arm was protected by a rolled poncho. According to both Domenech and La Nación, the aim was usually not to kill but to mark the opponent, ideally on the face. Desocio also distinguishes a duel to the death from a duel to first blood, which ended with one of the men wounded. Desocio states that the first esgrima criolla tournaments were held in 2011 in La Matanza under a newly created basic set of rules, and that today it is practiced in gyms, in squares and at martial arts tournaments. According to him, in its sporting form pleasure has replaced the defense of honor, and the fight is governed by rules and referees prepared for specific tournaments.
History
According to Corominas, whom Desocio (2017) cites, the word gaucho has denoted a rural Creole of the Río de la Plata since 1782. Slatta writes that the gaucho wore a knife tucked behind him in a wide leather belt called the tirador and used it to kill and skin cattle, to eat, and sometimes to fight. According to Slatta, the facón was a long knife resembling a sword, the gauchos' favorite and most dangerous weapon, which the authorities repeatedly banned. He says the gauchos preferred it to firearms until the twentieth century. Desocio defines a duel as a fight on which two men had agreed and in which they used deadly weapons. According to him, the poncho served them as a blanket on cold nights and as protection in brawls. In Juan Moreira (1879), Gutiérrez depicts noisy gatherings in pulperías that usually ended in a fight. Greenberg (2014) writes of an unyielding code of violence and a cult of courage that Borges admired.
How it differs
Domenech (2008) distinguishes the facón and daga as fighting weapons from the cuchilla and puñal, which were multipurpose tools. According to him, the daga is typified by a long, slender, double-edged blade. Long-Ohni (2013) in La Nación defines the facón as a large, straight, pointed knife with a crossguard and usually two edges, and Desocio (2017) gives it an edge and a counter-edge. Long-Ohni adds that the gaucho fought with the facón, never with the puñal, which he saw as a dishonorable and treacherous weapon. According to Domenech, old or broken swords, sabres and bayonets gave their blades for facones and dagas. Wikipedia states that some facones were made by shortening swords.
Technique
According to La Nación (2008), the duel took place in a cancha, a bounded space where two men stood. Desocio (2017) describes a gaucho with a knife in his right hand to attack and a poncho in his less skilled hand to defend. According to La Nación, a rebenque, a riding whip, was sometimes used as a secondary weapon. A blow from above was called Dios te guarde, and according to the same paper its name comes from Spanish sword fencing. The barbijo was a slash aimed at the face and the planazo a blow with the flat of the blade, meant to humiliate the opponent. According to La Nación, each of these had its answer, the quite, and in a Creole duel everything was allowed, including trampling him and throwing dirt in his face. Horacio Quiroga, in his chronicle Esgrima criolla, describes a stance with the right leg stretched, the left bent, the body slightly back and the fist low. The rhythmic clashing of blades together at the same angle is called barajeo.
Training
According to La Nación (2008), visteo was a children's game that people also played as adults. Long-Ohni (2013) describes it as a feigned duel between two opponents and an art learned in the countryside from childhood almost like a game. According to him, the youngest played a dedo tiznao to mark the opponent's face, while adolescents played with the facón. La Nación states that visteo was practised with sticks, empty sheaths or just a finger blackened with soot. According to Dillon (2019, Martial Journal), master Jorge Emilio Prina claims that he taught knife fighting to both prisoners and guards. About the poncho he says that its effectiveness depends on who handles it.
Ranks and progression
According to Domenech (2008), luxury silver knives appeared after 1830-1840, and today the facón and the daga are shown only in parades, desfiles. According to him, real gauchos disappeared around 1880-1890 with the arrival of wire fences, the telegraph and the railway. According to Desocio (2017), their tradition was carried on by the malevos, vagrant, harmful and quarrelsome men, and by the compadritos. Among the malevos the primera sangre rule applied, under which whoever wounded first decided. According to Desocio, a compadrito is someone who brought the tango to the suburbs, arrabales. Greenberg (2014) writes that the milonga arose from the gaucho payada and the tango from it. According to the 1929 penal register of the prison in La Plata, which Desocio cites, prisoners used this practice for defence and to assert power.
Today
Desocio (2017) names as the setting of today's tournaments the organizations U.I.A.M.A. (Unión Internacional de Artistas Marciales Asociados) and A.I.P.A.M. (Asociación Internacional de Practicantes de Artes Marciales) and the group Eskrima Kombat, which has a Filipino basis. He himself examines whether there is continuity between historical practice and today's sporting form. According to Dillon (2019, Martial Journal), Master Jorge Emilio Prina says he learned from various people, knives and teachers and combined the weapons into his own teaching system. He is the author of the book Esgrima Criolla, armas gauchas y otras yerbas, and according to the same article his representative in the USA is Danny Hoskins. Mario López Osornio also wrote the book Esgrima Criolla, and Goodreads lists its publication in 2005.
Did you know
According to Slatta, knife fights were made famous by gaucho literature, especially José Hernández's Martín Fierro and Eduardo Gutiérrez's Juan Moreira. In Hernández's poem, according to Greenberg (2014), Martín Fierro kills a man in a knife fight in a tavern and becomes an outlaw. Gutiérrez describes Moreira's facón with a blade two feet long and a silver handle inlaid with gold. According to Long-Ohni (2013), a famous visteador was Julián Andrade, Juan Moreira's inseparable companion, who was with him on the night of his death in Lobos. According to Long-Ohni, who refers to Ciro Bayo, the facón was nicknamed el sexto dedo because of its many uses. Slatta writes in The Cowboy Encyclopedia that the facón was worn at the back behind the belt so that the gaucho would not kill himself if he fell forward off his horse. According to Greenberg, Borges sought out cuchilleros in the barrios of Buenos Aires in the 1920s.
Frequently asked questions
Was the aim of a duel in esgrima criolla to kill the opponent?
According to Domenech (2008) and La Nación (2008), usually not. The gauchos wanted to mark the opponent, ideally on the face. Desocio (2017), however, distinguishes a duel to the death from a duel to first blood.
How long was the facón?
The sources disagree on the length of the facón. Desocio (2017) gives roughly 30 cm for the whole knife, Domenech (2008) 15 to 18 inches and Wikipedia 25 to 51 cm.
When were the first esgrima criolla tournaments held?
According to Desocio (2017), the first tournaments were held in 2011 in La Matanza under a newly created basic set of rules that made the competition possible.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.