mexican kung fu?

[Yung Apprentice]

I heard about this somewhere.Has anyone else?Sounds different.

[Paul]

there are probably (this is just a guess) people in Mexico that teach kung fu.

[Yung Apprentice]

no,no, supposedly there was a style called mexican kung fu. While on the internet I was on SEARCH and accidently came acrossed it.I just thought it was weird .

[Leonidas]

Why do countries always claim things that are not theres. Sorta like American Karate/Kempo...etc, now Mexican Kungfu. Those languages dont even go together............ .

[Leonidas]

Why do countrues always claim things that are not theirs. Sorta like American Karate/Kempo...etc, now Mexican Kungfu. Those languages dont even go together............ .

[Sharky]

that HAD to be set up on purpose

[logic]

www.highspots.com/arena/prof/kungfu.htm

[Stacey]

shiatsu, karate, kanji, apple pie. Tae Kwan do (they can keep it)

Japanese rock gardens, "American Ninja"

Defendo. Pancrase, american kickboxing

[Chang Style Novice]

I wouldn't call it kung fu, since that's a chinese name, but http://yaomachtia.com is the website of a guy who claims to have reconstructed an Aztec fighting system.

Now, I have no doubt that the Aztecs were great warriors (you don't get an empire that size without some skilled soldiers) and his 'eagle club' weapon looks like the weapon held by warriors in some of the pictographs I've seen. On the other hand the fact that his website hasn't been updated in more than a year, is full of language errors, and doesn't even have a link to a spanish version don't exactly fill me with confidence about authenticity. Which, I hasten to add, has little to do with his fighting ability. Wally Jay seems to think highly of him, and if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Jay is very well regarded by the jujitsu community.

[JasBourne]

hahahaha logic well done, that was indeed "Mexican Kung Fu". I asked my mexican cousins about him, they said he was big back in the '80s.

There's no such thing as "mexican kung fu". Machete-fu, maybe, and good old-fashioned dirty street fighting, but there is no martial arts system specific to Mexico. None of the great warrior cultures of Mexico (the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Toltecs, the Olmecs) had a specific and stylized martial arts system. They did have some pretty mean rituals and bloodthirsty sports though... like Mayan football, where the losing team forfeited their lives...

[Chang Style Novice]

"None of the great warrior cultures of Mexico (the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Toltecs, the Olmecs) had a specific and stylized martial arts system."

I'm very dubious about this assertion. Very few cultures have been as systematically erased as the great empires of central america. Because of the superiority of Spanish martial technology (horses, guns, steel blades and armor) the natives of Mexico were overrun in record time, and any oral martial culture that may have existed was quickly made obsolete and perhaps forgotten entirely. Soon after, because of the fanatacism of Catholic Missionaries, fantastic amounts of written records were destroyed (I think something like under 20 volumes of codices survive out of tens of thousands in their libraries) and who knows how many martial arts manuals may have existed within them?

Almost all that remains are the stone carvings in the architecture, and unsurprisingly they deal almost exclusively with religion and the stories of the great kings entombed therein. As far as I know, most of the written languages of Central and South America are only partially if at all understood by anthropologists and other academics.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that with a massive army of 'eagle club' baring warriors there was formal training in the techniques of hand to hand combat. Nor would it surprise me to learn that those who competed in the mayan football games had intensive study of that brutal ritual sport.

One other minor issue with your post; according to one scholar who has lectured me on the subject, the WINNERS of the maya football games were selected to die. It was quite the honor!

[JasBourne]

Hmmmmm. That's not how I heard it in school down in Mexico (I spent 10 years of my childhood there).

Although you are correct that most of the written records (such as they were, not all the cultures were big on written) were destroyed, original language, history, and traditions survive strongly to this day in the indigent peoples. If there was a defined, specific, and stylistic system of martial combat it would have been passed down this way. There is not.

I heard thye losers in Mayan pelota got offed, not the winners. I'll go pull up my textbooks and look it up

[Chang Style Novice]

Well, I'm not any kind of expert. This is just sort of jack-of-all-trades hobbyist type of knowledge I'm sharing. A lot of it comes from a graduate student in Theatrical History here at UT who gave a lecture to a class I was in about indigenous theater traditions in pre-colombian Mexico.

Just to hype up my own sources and downplay your own, I'll mention that grade school-level textbooks are usually written by the winners and that UT has about the best Latin American studies department anywhere; I believe the lady who gave the lecture I mentioned before was doing an interdiciplinary thang with the LAS guys.

None of which is to say I remember it all with perfect accuracy, or that even if I did, she had it all correct.

Excellent point about lots of indigenous culture surviving in folk and oral traditions, btw. I think that martial arts type traditions may be an exception to that for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post. (whew! back on topic at last!)

I'm eager to hear what you find in your old textbooks. Thanks for taking the trouble to look.

[JasBourne]

Ok, I looked around for the answer - just about everything leans twoards the "losers die" theorem. I did find this:

----------------------------------------
The Ball Court (Juego de Pelota)

The game itself involved two teams, each able to hit the ball only with elbows, wrists or hips, and the object was to knock the ball through one of the stone hoops on the walls of the court.

Looking at the carvings on the lower walls of the court, you can see that this was not a casual sport. There are clear depictions of one team member with blood spurting from his headless neck, whilst another holds the head aloft. Some people think the captain of the losing side was executed by the winner; others suggest that the winners earned an honorable sacrifice. No-one knows for sure. It is said that the game was used either as a method of settling disputes, or as an offering to the gods, perhaps in times of drought. Only the best were selected to play, and to be sacrificed in this way was a great honor.


Games in the Ball Court were used to settle disputes or as an offering to the gods. Many believe the losers were put to death.
----------------------------------------

The Maya were not a death cult. No one wants to die at their physical peak - I can't see anyone playing their best to win so they can die, but I can totally see wanting not to lose if the losers are to be killed


My vote goes to common sense - losers die.

[Chang Style Novice]

Wow, that was fast! My old lecture notes aren't so easy to find, alas.

Interesting that both points of view get some play in the quote you give. A lot of study of ancient cultures is like this; it can't be known for certain, so people disagree on a lot of minor issues.

And yeah, I'm sure it didn't seem minor to the guy who got his noggin lopped.