Brighter days for Inaul industry seen under BARMM regional outfit

MAGUINDANAO --- The province launched Thursday the colorful Inaul Festival showcasing an iconic Moro fabric and as thanksgiving for the ratification of the Bangsamoro Organic Law.Ratified via a plebiscite last January 21, the BOL, or Republic Act 11054, is a product of 20 years of talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, meant to end decades of strife in southern Mindanao.Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, who campaigned extensively for an affirmative vote for the BOL, led Thursday’s kickoff rite for the provincial Inaul Festival, the third in three years, in Buluan town, the provincial capital.The weeklong festival highlights the effort of the provincial government to revive the centuries-old production of the colorful Maguindanaon inaul fabric using traditional looms that are prototypes of those used by weavers in centuries past.The yearly event, capped off with cultural shows and traditional competitions, is also part of a strategy to connect Inaul weavers to buyers outside of Mindanao and abroad.For contemporary historians, the Inaul cloth symbolizes the resilience of closely-knit ethnic Maguindanaon communities in the raya, or upper delta, and the ilod, or the downstream zone of Maguindanao.Maguindanao literally means the flooded plains of central Mindanao owing to its proximity to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, which has vast natural gas deposits that can be harnessed for power generation and other industrial fuel needs.Maguindanao’s indigenous non-Muslim Teduray people have also been wearing clothes made of Inaul fabric even before Shariff Mohammad Kabunsuan, an Arab-Malay cleric from Johore, now part of Malaysia, set foot in what is now Cotabato City in the 14th century to spread Islam.Islam was already a dominant religion among southerners even prior to the arrival of Portuguese merchant-sailor Ferdinand Magellan in Limasawa on March 16, 1521 that marked the spread of Christianity in what he named then the Islas de Filipinas, now the Philippines.The Inaul was featured in recent international pageants held in the country, as main material for clothes worn by contestants.The feat complemented efforts to globally advertise the fabric, now being produced again actively by local weavers with the help of the office of Mangudadatu, now in his third and last term as governor.The provincial government has been trying to maximize the involvement of Maguindanao’s tri-people, or the local Muslim, Christian and Lumad groups, in the inaul industry, now an alternative means of livelihood for local weavers, among them dependents of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) members.The enactment into law last year and the subsequent ratification via the January 21 plebiscite of the BOL was based on accords reached by Malacañang and the MILF in two decades of peace talks. There is big reason for us to celebrate the ratification of the BOL. We are dedicating the 2019 provincial Inaul Festival to all the people, to the government and the MILF for having worked together tediously to have that law, Mangudadatu said.The BOL is the enabling measure for the replacement of the now 29-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with an MILF-led Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM.The regional charter of ARMM, the Republic Act 9054, got repealed by BOL’s ratification during the January 21 plebiscite in its five provinces, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.Mangudadatu, whose last term as governor will end on June 30 this year, said a negotiated closure to the MILF secessionist activities in central Mindanao will bolster efforts of promoting the Inaul weaving industry. With a durable peace setting in, we can expand this trade. More families will earn from it, have extra income for the schooling of children and for other basic needs, Mangudadatu said.