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Machetes are agricultural tools that gained widespread use in the Americas through Spanish colonization. Machetes are ideal for slashing through flexible vegetation like cane, straw, and hay. The hook allowed the user to cut and pull stalks efficiently in one motion. As common harvesting tools, they were often wielded by enslaved people in the Americas and the Caribbean. They thus became convenient weapons during uprisings such as the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and the German Coast Uprising (1811).