I find many questionable statements in that article. From the concept of the machete, to the history of it´s development in America and it´s types. The machete, as we actually know it, is the result of an evolution which begins in Spain, and not with the whacking sticks of aboriginal americans. This evolution implies many diverse forms, geometries and measures, some of which are reflected on the actual machetes. The machete has been, historically, a tool and a weapon, even today, no matter the intentions of their actual manofacturers. We produce and use still today in Mexico, machetes with hanguards and elaboratedly hilts with eagle pommels decorated with silver, and blades with etched inscriptions tipical of the motos used on the military swords. And people use them as a weapon.
Tough the machete have been progressively used more as a tool than as a weapon, since it´s origins and difussion throught the spanish army, and latter throught the spanish settlers, the machetes were used by the commoneers to make war or to work on the fields in agricultural and cattle raising activities. The spanish army, by Royal Order of october 5th, 1841, adopted the machete for all the infantry and provincial militias, since the saber "...in the present cirumstances and the actual state in the art of the war, it is a a bothersome and impeding weapon on the march and manoeuvres, useless on encampments and combats". (Free traslation form a quote made by José Luis Calvó, a distinguished researcher on this subject, on his article "Sables, Espadas y Machetes Distintivo de Clases de a Pié I", page 27). In other words, the machete was adopted as the sidearm of the infantry, artillery and engineer corps since then.
This, conducted to the development of some colonial versions of the military machete on Cuba and the Phillipines, and influenced the versions of this weapon in Mexico, thought independent from Spain since 1821. The very war of independence of Mexico, and latter the civil wars and the wars made against foreign interventionist countries, were made with the massive use of the machete as a sidearm. It can be said that agicultural implements were used in all the world to make wars, but as I stated, the machete was also specifically a weapon, and it took several military types which still survive. The traditional machete was not the actual laminated thin blade massively produced, but has a tapered blade aproximately 5mm thick at their beginning, and has the profile of a wedge. Examples survive on mexican museums.
The actual machete is the result of the industrialized and cheap version of it, designed by countries foreign to this tradition, in order to satisfy the needs of the markets of the less industrialized countries. Hardly an "ethnic" edged tool, or just as ethnic, as the bowies made for the United States on the Sheffield factories in England in the 19th Century, with which the machete shares the fact of being a tool and a weapon. Is as ethnic, as the malayan-indonesian edged weapons made by Valiant Co. And though many of this less indutrialized countries actually make the same cheap models, their direct origin is found in Collins, the Solingen factories and other manofacturers in Europe and the United States. Another thing is to study the traditional old machete.
My best regards
Gonzalo
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