Arnis/ Kalis/ Silat
The Southern Filipino islands like Mindanao were the same people as Indonesia before some European drew an imaginary line across it and proclaimed it's Filipino statehood.
The American government brought the muslim territories into what is now the Philippines...... They were independant areas before..... Actually there were already some muslim settlers in Luzon and the Visayas (ex. Rajah Sulaiman camp in what is now called Intramuros). Different waves of immigration came to the Philippines some from Borneo other from Indonesia.....
Arnis & Eskrima are Spanish words. They're Northern Filipino stick/ knife fighting mixed with European sword fighting.
Arnis, Escrima and Kalis are different words for what we understand by filipino weapon arts..... they do not correspond to different martial arts....
Arnis-Escrima-Kalis are words like Kung Fu to designate local martial arts and not different systems....
The spanish word Arnis is understood in the whole archipelago, escrima mostly in cebu and some southern islands....
Nearly nobody in the Philippines uses the word Kalis.....
The muslim "escrima-arnis-kalis" art I know wasn't called kalis, escrima or arnis before.
Just "to use the bolo" in the Yakan dialect, in recent times (silat) grandmaster use the words escrima, arnis to talk about it in front of christian filipinos..... but it means the same art.It is very different (by it's footwork) from any other christian system.... but it never was called Kali.
If muslim filipinos practiced an art called Kali christian filipinos could hardly have learned it from them given the bad relations between both groups....
Read about any famous Northern Filipino Arnis or Eskrima stick fighters and you will find that they traveled to the Southern Filipinos to study Kali with the legendary tribes and masters.
There are lots of stories about this..... and most of them are doubtfull....
I know one famous player of the Illustrissimo group who once told to some journalists that there are mountain arnis styles, rice fields arnis styles and city arnis styles.... the mountain styles would be long range oriented, the rice field medium range, and the city styles short range oriented.....
it became published afterwards,
there are so many false stories on fmas....
Arnis-Escrima.... are arts meant to kill peoples..... you don't teach this to your enemies. For centuries local muslims raided Luzon the Visayas and Mindanao (as well as Indonesia, Malaysia...) in retaliation for spanish expeditions and also for their economy based on slave labor... both groups were ennemies for centuries and this more or less goes on today.
Muslim filipinos and lumads would never teach their arts to outsiders, not even to muslims-lumads of other clan, even less to christian who are already masters and could be threats to their clans...
I had(ve) a hard time learning it and am not allowed to teach it outside the familly.
The biggest differences between Kali and Arnis & Eskrima are:
1) Kali uses mostly Filipino & Indonesian words and Arnis & Eskrima uses mostly Spanish & Filipino words.
2) Kali has stick fighting and empty hand fighting aspects. Arnis & Eskrima are stick fighting with empty hand disarms.
3) Kalis empty hand fighting is Silat. Arnis & Eskrimas empty hand disarms can be Karate, Aikido or whatever else they've adopted.
1) I know personally players of the Illustrissimo kalis group.... they use many spanish words...
In basilan "escrima" use Yakan words...
2) Kalis Illustrissimo is a blade art.... it has also empty hands and disarms.....
Muslim "escrima" systems are mostly blade arts, sticks are seldom used,they have empty hands and disarms.
3) Kalis Illustrissimo empty hands are very different from traditional silat... no jurus, no seni, different ways of moving, different positions, no illmu pratcices; there aren't infinite numbers of ways to hit an opponent but to my and their eyes it isn't silat....
Fmas empty hands are often called combat judo.... karate means any striking art in the Philippines, it can mean sikaran, kung fu, ,silat ,kuntao...
Now with all that said, there have been a lot of mixing in the last 30 years or so especially with the Northern styles so it is possible to see Silat in a particular Arnis or Eskrima style.
This is unlikely, if there is silat influence in some arnis styles it is probably indonesian silat...... filipino muslim guros are very secretive ....
Also the Arnis & Eskrima styles have added other Indigenous Filipino arts like Dumog (wrestling) & Sikaran (foot fighting/kicking) into them.