Cuban Machete

[pbleed]

Dear Friends,
As a member new to the forum, please allow me to make my first posting.
In March, I traveled to Santiago Cuba to survey the research potential of battle fields associated with the Spanish Cuban-American Way of 1898. While there and visiting museums, I discovered the wonderful variety of Cuban fighting machete. As a long time collector (nippon-to and rapiers, mainly) I have seen Span-Am vintage machete, but never paid them much attention. I'd like to get more serious.
And so let me ask the forum, are there any sources that describe Cuban blades? What is their availability? Where do they surface? Who are the players?
PBleed

[Lew]

Greetings Pbleed

The Cuban machetes I have seen were usually made buy Collins or various German cutlery companies I will ask a friend of mine for some info and names of books you can purchase with photos of various machetes.


Lew

[Chris Evans]

Hi pbleed,

1. I presume that you are inquiring about historical antiques and not modern machetes.

2. They generally were more like short swords than what we would these days call a machete.

3. The Spanish army used large numbers of these and the only place that I have seen them turn up for sale are at this Spanish antique dealers website:

http://www.armasantiguas.com/

Unfortunately, it is all in Spanish, but I have bought arms from this firm and they are very good to deal with.

Cheers
Chris

[tom hyle]

Interesting link; nice looking non-bat-head parang nabur over there. On the other weapons page (otras armas or armas otras or somthing) is a heavy Spanish artillery short sword whose official name in the Spanish military is machete (of some kind), as you say, typically of the varience in Spanish and N American use of the term. However, I must point out that I've seen numbers of actual machetes (ie. thin, flattish, flat tang, no guard, rounded slashing tip.) either from or for the export to, Cuba. Cuba is known as one of the places that had a "tipping" law in part of the 20th, BTW. This is alluded to in the Collins book, if I recall correctly; I forget the author's name at the moment.

[not2sharp]

Good References:

Collins Machetes and Bowies 1845-1965, Daniel Edward Henry
Armamento Portatil Espanol 1764-1939, B. Barcelo Rubi
Eickhorn Edge Weapons Exports Vol 1, Latin America, A.M.de Quesada, R.G.Hickox

n2s

[Jens Nordlunde]

Welcome not2sharp - although I don't feel that the name you use covers your knowledge - but you are very welcome all the same.

Jens

[pbleed]

Thank you all for the interesting and useful replies. I will make use of them.
Frankly, it seems like there is little literature on weapons of this category. In this day and age when virtually everything has had a book written about it, it is nice to encounter a "new" topic.
PBleed

[Conogre]

It's nice to see machetes once again being called "weapons", as in the past few years it seems that they have been looked down upon as a poor relative of the sword and ONLY a tool, while they have been and still are the weapon of choice for the very poor, as recently evidenced in Nigeria in huge quantities, among other African locales.
Likewise, in many "plantation" nations from Central America south, as well as Carribean island nations the machete has always been the common man's sword of the revolution......because of agriculture, they were "tools" and thus not lethal, suitable and often required for the poorest people to work, and who were also the ones most likely to revolt.
Semantics can be so fascinating.
Mike

[M ELEY]

I'm with you, Mike, on the machete vote. I've seen several vicious wounds inflicted with a machete and a near-decapitation with one(drug-related...go figure). In that book about Spanish coloniakl weapons whose name escapes me right now, machetes are spoken of as both a tool and a weapon, descending from the respected 'espada anchas' of the 19th century and before.

[Andrew]

n2s! Welcome back.

[tom hyle]

Love machete. Just let me make a quick reference to my idea that though it is commonly referenced as of European descent through common farmers' and soldiers' hangers/langmessers/etc. that were often officially/traditionally "knives" though really swords, and were used for work as well as for self-defence etc., and though such descent is a visible and valid factor, Though all that, I believe that machete is a sword that came to exist around the caribean and the East coasts of the Americas, and that came to exist in the hands of African captive slaves. in this context the resemblance of its thin-ness/flatness to African fighting swords, as well as the wide rounded slashing tip, the sharpening only toward the tip (takouba anyone?), and the non(modern)European flipped-wrist cutting style that goes with it, as well as the resemblance of a popular type to African mambeles, should not be ignored.
Two relevant examples from my experience: A billhook type machete, of the type I've referenced as mambeloid; forward hooked, but with a curvature more like (Zande etc.) mambele than European bill hooks, and widens toward the forward-curved end. A common type; not perhaps "true" machete; it's one of those feilds where there's like machete per se (rounded, non-narrowed cutting tip[often widened, but always not narrowed]) and surounding it a field of pretty definite machetoids that are either similar in construction (thin-ness, etc.) but of different outline, or similar in outline, but of more swordlike cross-section (like some of the military "machetes" we've already mentioned). Seen in the Hertzog/Kinski movie Cobra Verde, where, as fairly usual in the Caribean, it is called a cutlass=couteaux=knife=messer (zipped across that, eh?). Mine has a relatively thick unsharp shaft and a wide thin cutting head, like some African weapons commonly ID'd as "throwing knives). The handle was stitched, urine-tanned leather over a horsehair padding, and was dry rotted beyond even the gentlest of handling . This type of handle construction is also seen on African arms (particularly of the "throwing knife" type), with the same stitched leather grip over a sometimes mushy matrix around the tang (though the leather cure seemed to be N American Indian style, this tan was commonly used by low-caste rural mixed-blood/white people in N America up thru the early 20th; It's unsurprising if it bled over to African Americans/expatriated slaves, either as a technique, or as traded leather.)
Example B; an old sword that had been used as a prop, for sale on ebay a few years ago from the movie Cold Mountain (which I haven't seen; no idea if it's a prominant prop or in the background in a battle scene or what); a sword, I'm guessing Gulla; a, not so much A'Zande, as N'Gombe, style mambele; exactly, but with two alterations; a round hole in the tip ala European meat cleavers, and flat tang with rivetted scales; went without bids for I think $25. Tom and Conogre were broke, so don't blame us Heck of an interesting sword. Love machete.