Black Combat Arts Institute.
CARIBBEAN · EXTINCT
Maní
A striking game once played in Cuba by the Afro-Cuban communities of the plantation areas, in a circle to the drums: punches are delivered at the opponent, who dodges without breaking the rhythm. A fall means elimination.
ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS
A Cuban combat game of the Afro-Cuban communities, still alive in the 1940s before it vanished. A striking game staged in a closed circle of men, to the beat of the yuka drums and singing. Its memory survives through Fernando Ortiz, taken up by Robert Farris Thompson among the Black martial arts of the Caribbean.
THE GAME
A man at the centre chose an opponent at random and attacked, usually with a series of punches, sometimes a jumping kick. The defender was bound: he held a forward lunge for the whole exchange, forbidden to advance or retreat, and had to parry while dancing in rhythm, on pain of losing. If he protected himself through dodges and blocks, he won, took the centre in turn, and chose his own opponent. Anyone in the circle could be chosen at any instant.
PLACE IN THE FAMILY
The maní carried the whole structural grammar of the Black combat arts: the defender could not counter-attack; the dissymmetry of forces was manifest; the invitation to rupture was activated by the lunge and the impossibility of fleeing; and the rule demanded staying in rhythm, never sacrificing the bond with the drums for one's own safety. Its logic was at once horizontal and vertical, to break the opponent's rhythm by a touch or near-touch, or to unbalance him and make him touch the ground, which sets it, like capoeira, apart from the bènaden, the tolona or the batuque, built on negative imbalance alone. That random choice of target kept a permanent tension at centre and periphery alike, close to the cooperation-opposition of capoeira. By Ortiz's day the blows were no longer landed and the fighters wore gloves; the rise of English boxing very likely overcame its traditional form and hastened its disappearance. Only the danmyé of Martinique and the moring of Réunion share this double horizontal-vertical character.
SOURCES
Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984 [Capoeira and the Black combat arts: erased history, invisible techniques (1905–1984)], doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.
HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY
MALO, Olivier. Manì. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/mani [accessed date].
RELATED PRACTICES
→ Moringue, Striking game, dodge without breaking rhythm
→ Danmyé / Ladja, Both horizontal and vertical
→ Batuque, Fall means elimination
→ Capoeira, Circle, drums, evasion