Ciriaco Cañete, Filipino martial artist, Died at 96

  Actor, Artists, Sports

Ciriaco “Cacoy” Cañete was born on August 8, 1919, and died on February 5, 2016.

He was a Filipino martial artist of the Doce Pares Eskrima Club.

Ciriaco was the last surviving member of the club, which was founded in January 1932.

He held a 12th-degree black belt.

Ciriaco version of the Doce Pares Eskrima system was known as Cacoy Doce Pares.

Cañete developed a personal system of his named Eskrido, in 1951.

And he was instrumental in popularizing eskrima in the Philippines.

In the 1970s, Cañete met with other members of the Cebu Eskrima Society and spearheaded the movement to create a unified regional and national tournaments with sporting rules, to generalize the art of eskrima.

Even today eskrima matches had been fought with no rules and no protective gear; eskrima skills were to protect oneself from multiple armed attackers.

In 1979, at the age of sixty, he was the champion of the First Open Arnis Tournament in Cebu City and the First National Invitational Arnis Tournament in Manila.

Both games were sponsored by the National Arnis Association of the Philippines (NARAPHIL) and organized by Cañete’s nephew and former student, Dionisio, who had served as president of NARAPHIL and the World Kali-Eskrima Arnis Federation (WEKAF), an organization founded in 1987.

As an actor in the 1979 Filipino film Arnis: The Stick of Death, he played himself.

Following his brother’s death and the club’s founder Euloigio Cañete, Ciriaco “Cacoy” Cañete was elected President of the Doce Pares club, in 1988.

He continued to hold this position until his death.

Ciriaco was diagnosed to have Prostate Cancer in 2008 and underwent a succesful surgery, but it returned several years later.

And he was already ill when he was admitted to the Chong Hua Hospital in Downtown Cebu sometime in late January 2016.

Ciriaco “Cacoy” Cañete passed away at 96 yrs old.