Lesley Jackson is taken to South America and learns about the martial arts of the Peruvian Inca, discovering some fascinating facts about this ancient culture but also that no matter where you are in the world, fighting doesn’t really change that much.
Rumi Maki Fighting Arts: Martial Techniques of the Peruvian Inca
Publisher: Blue Snake Books (2007)Pages: 133 pages Languages: English RRP:£13.99
Book Review:
It was with a bizarre coincidence that I happened to pick up this book about the little-known martial art of Rumi Maki, which originated from the ancient Peruvian Inca many hundreds of years ago. Normally, I would think, ‘what on earth has Martial Edge given me to read now,’ but it just so happened that the night before I watched a history docu-drama about the sixteenth century conquistador, Cortez, the man who laid siege to and defeated the Aztec empire. Thus having given me a rough idea of the history of the conquest of South America by the Spanish, it made reading this book all the more relevant and poignant as it was clear that through European colonization, the world has lost a lot of culture and traditions, martial included, through the need to impose Western ideas and religion upon those we conquered.
The first third of this volume gives a potted history of the ancient tribes that inhabited the southern continent of America from the Stone Age to the sixteenth century, when it was invaded by the Spanish and Portuguese. However, as interesting and diverse as these cultures were it is apparent like every culture on Earth, there has always been a need to develop a martial tradition as “Throughout time, every society has developed some form of self-defence, motivated by the actions of those whom wish to abuse or subject them through force.” No change there then. Of course, what is interesting about this book is that we tend to automatically think of the Orient when we think of martial arts but all societies develop them, and although they may differ slightly in reference to culture, they actually look surprisingly similar in the end as they are based around the same principle of people hitting each other. What was interesting about the South American martial arts was their similarity to the Chinese kungfu styles in that they are based around animals such as monkey or frog. The authors put an interesting spin on this as they equated this to the very early people’s need to hunt and “to use their ingenuity to equal or exceed the forces and abilities of the beasts they encountered.”
The emphasis of myth, ritual and religion is also explored (although the topic of human sacrifice is glossed over somewhat!) and the authors make clear that this is an integral part of the Incan martial arts and cannot be separated. One of the most fascinating descriptions is of the coming of age ritual whereby the young men of the tribe are put through a test to prove their status as warrior and burgeoning manhood. This month long test of endurance would make any marine’s eyes water and reduce a modern black belt to tears as the men were starved, beaten and pushed to their physical limitations to prove they had the fortitude to fight and continue their martial arts training. What was refreshing to learn was that the royal princes also had to endure this rite of passage, dressed in rags to equalise them to the other combatants so as “he would not feel contempt for wretched people, recalling that he himself had once worn their attire.”
The fascinating facts that one learns from this slim text, such as the painful altitude training and the adaptation to the hilly terrain, are numerous with the only criticism being that even more could have been written about the history and culture of the Incas. ‘Rumi Maki’ is a curious little volume for those interested in expanding their knowledge about world martial arts.
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