injuries. Maní was played with or without a kind of glove (muñeca). No manísero knew for sure whom the
dancer would strike next, and in these feints and deception—reaching out for the nearest but hitting the one
furthest away resided one of the game’s main attractions. If the dancer in the middle failed to hit a player,
he lost and had to leave his privileged post to the one who had managed to avoid his blow. Once there were
not enough players left to close the circle, the maníseros formed a semi-circle in front of the drums, with the
dancer in the middle between them and the percussion. At that stage the players were called cockerels
(gallos). In the final part one gallo imparted blows against the only other player left, until one won the
contest and was declared the overall champion.
Two or three drums and a metallic bell (similar to the agogô used in Brazilian candomblé and capoeira)
accompanied maní movements. The drummers could participate in the game. They played ‘slow traditional
rhythms’, to which the dancer in the middle of the circle and the other maniseros sang puyas and estribillos.
The chief drummer had to watch the game with great care, because he had to mark the blow struck by the
dancer in the middle with a special, harder beat, imitating thus the sound produced by the manisero’s hit.
Here resided another crucial subtlety of the game. If the chief drummer failed, he had to leave his post,
which was taken over by somebody else. Ortiz noted that this synchrony between the playing of the drum
and the steps and gestures of the dancer was also characteristic of the rumba brava. This, in his view,
confirmed that rumba and maní were both of Yoruba, and more particularly, Gangá origins. He observed
that songs were sometimes ‘en lengua’, that is, in an African language, although generally in creolized Spanish
so that everyone, the Africans from different nations, the creoles and the whites, could understand them.
The songs consisted of verses chanted by a lead singer, answered by the chorus of maníseros and the larger
audience. They were often improvised, and as in capoeira, helped to stimulate or provoke the players.
Blows had to be administered from the waist upwards (‘de cintura parriba’), otherwise they were
considered dishonest, resulting in ‘bloody reprisals’. According to Ortiz, ‘sometimes the good rules of the
dance were forgotten and “bad blows” administered, “as you like”, not only with the fists, but also feet and
head, and targeting in this way face and torso or belly and groin’. But even when respecting the rules, the
game was tough and required great resistance. There was a great risk of serious, even mortal injuries. For
that reason a maní song advised: ‘Who can’t take the blows should not dare to enter but only watch from
far away’.
Ortiz reports a softer and a harder modality of the game. In the former, a player was eliminated when he
was forced to leave the circle, but in the tougher form of the game he only lost when he was knocked down.
When Ortiz wrote his book, in the 1940s, maní was just played as a ‘jolly parody’, using gloves, without the
blows being administered, and the strikes barely ‘marked’. He advanced the hypothesis that maní had some
magical meaning in Africa, but did not know if this was maintained in Cuba. He however emphasized that
maniseros used to hide very powerful charms and amulets in their gloves or in their belts.
Frequently maniseros were organized in bands, and challenged collectively other groups. Games
sometimes took place between groups from different plantations, often encouraged by the owners, who even
organized the bands themselves. A few whites also became maniseros, for instance the military governor of
Trinidad. During the nineteenth century, some slave maniseros made so much money that they could afford
to buy their freedom. The game was occasionally repressed in the province of Las Villas, because it had
generated many fights and was seen as responsible for crime. But according to Ortiz this was only
temporary and local, and no legal general prohibition was ever implemented on the island.
Readers familiar with capoeira will have noticed a number of important similarities, including the close
relationship between movements and rhythms and the leading role of the songs. Even if maní movements
consisted primarily in a kind of boxing, this was, just as capoeira, embedded in a basic rhythmic step, and when
it degenerated into an open fight, kicks similar to capoeira could be used. One key difference though is that
60 THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC