Juego del Garrote
Venezuelan walking-stick fighting art from the state of Lara, tied to the Tamunangue festival and the tradition of the garroteros.
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About Juego del Garrote
Juego del garrote is a Venezuelan stick-fighting art most closely associated with the state of Lara, where it is known as garrote larense, though it is also practiced in the states of Coro, Guárico and Miranda. It took shape as a recognizable practice around Barquisimeto in the early nineteenth century, when fighting with a stick or a machete became a common and socially accepted way of settling disputes, both personal and political. The weapon was an ordinary walking stick with a woven handle, of the kind Venezuelan men carried from the early nineteenth century until roughly the middle of the twentieth. The setting in which garrote was cultivated was male and recreational: men drank, gambled and displayed fearlessness. Yet it was not unrestrained brawling. Village elders upheld an unwritten measure that kept a dispute from turning into a blood feud while still allowing a man to show his fighting skill. Practitioners known as garroteros worked with the stick alongside the machete, the rapier, the military saber, the knife, the spear and the whip, and their training also covered unarmed techniques, disarms, wrestling, sweeps and trips. In the nineteen-thirties folklorists recorded garrote as part of the Sones de Negros festival in Barquisimeto, Carora and the surrounding towns. After the Second World War the democratic government renamed the local feast of St. Anthony as Tamunangue, presenting it as a blend of indigenous, African and European culture in the service of national unity. The essential record of the tradition remains Eduardo Sanoja's book "Juego de garrote larense," published in 1984.
Similar styles
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