Eskrima or arnis is now the Philippine National Sport. So what’s next? What are the Philippine government programs to help promote eskrima as a truly national sport? Is there a sound, workable strategy to promote eskrima or FMA, in general?
If you read close enough, you'll notice that officially in the Philippines, arnis is not a martial art but a sport.
Maybe it is a bad to declare arnis as a national martial art; maybe it sounds like a “national criminal” or something. And possibly, this is why the Senate and the House sanitized arnis as a mere national sport.
So if you are into arnis or eskrima, you are an athlete not a martial artist. To add salt to this, we can say that arnis should not be categorized as Filipino Martial Art (FMA), but a Filipino Indigenous Sport.
As a "national" sport, arnis, has to compete with basketball and sabung or cockfighting in popularity. The truth of the matter is arnis is not really that popular in the Islands up to this day. In fact the organizers are forced to conduct many arnis events in the malls, because it is difficult for them to find and gather sympathetic crowd nowadays. Arnis events are becoming cheap, unfortunately (at least here in Cebu City, Philippines). Now that arnis is the National Sport, the condition may change for the better. And this remains to be seen.
This blog may sound so pessimistic; on the contrary, this is not. But how can we expect positive change if we don't dare to see things squarely?
This is the sad fact, whether we all deny this or not.
If you read close enough, you'll notice that officially in the Philippines, arnis is not a martial art but a sport.
Maybe it is a bad to declare arnis as a national martial art; maybe it sounds like a “national criminal” or something. And possibly, this is why the Senate and the House sanitized arnis as a mere national sport.
So if you are into arnis or eskrima, you are an athlete not a martial artist. To add salt to this, we can say that arnis should not be categorized as Filipino Martial Art (FMA), but a Filipino Indigenous Sport.
As a "national" sport, arnis, has to compete with basketball and sabung or cockfighting in popularity. The truth of the matter is arnis is not really that popular in the Islands up to this day. In fact the organizers are forced to conduct many arnis events in the malls, because it is difficult for them to find and gather sympathetic crowd nowadays. Arnis events are becoming cheap, unfortunately (at least here in Cebu City, Philippines). Now that arnis is the National Sport, the condition may change for the better. And this remains to be seen.
This blog may sound so pessimistic; on the contrary, this is not. But how can we expect positive change if we don't dare to see things squarely?
This is the sad fact, whether we all deny this or not.
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