DAVAO CITY—The festival trying to revive the ancestral weaving among ethnic Maguindanao residents has wrought changes in the economic landscape of a lakeside town, which relies heavily on aquaculture and rice farming.
The town of Buluan takes its name from Lake Buluan in Maguindanao, one of the big lakes in the Cotabato rice plains, to which its more than 50,000 residents rely on their food and livelihood.
In the last couple of years since the “inaul” or cloth weaving festival was held, the town center has seen dramatic changes. From the usual stalls of grilled chicken and fish and other food items, to sari-sari stores and ukay-ukay (rummage sales) in the town plaza—all too common scenes among rural towns—now, financial institutions such as banks, pawnshops and quick money- transfer shops have begun to capture a clientele of small entrepreneurs, successful farmers and fishermen.
The clientele of banks and money transfers have included some enterprising weavers of cloth used in traditional Maguidnanao and ethnic costumes, said Ayesha Dilangalen, Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) tourism secretary, who went around key cities of Mindanao, including Davao City, to drumbeat the Inaul Festival to visitors and investors.
The Land Bank of the Philippines, a financial institution, has established a branch inside the town.
From the shabby shanty-looking stores and stalls now comes concrete structures, and from mostly food and second-hand clothing sales, now come distribution centers of known motorcycle brands.
“People are engaged in financial transactions and trading,” she said.
Dilangalen said the changes were expected to continue as the festival visitors continue to do transactions with other local businesses long after the Inaul Festival ended.
“This is what we want to happen as a consequence of holding the festival and making this an attraction to outside of the province,” she said.
But as organizers of the Inaul Festival were elated with the conspicuous economic changes in the town center, the tourism department of the ARMM longed for the revival of the weaving industry, a source of trading attraction for the locals whose ancestors once engaged other Asian traders in the 1700s and 1800s. Samples of clothings from this era were presented during the second Inaul Festival.
The agency already sent directives to Maguindanao province’s 36 municipal governments to form or activate their respective women’s groups and revive the weaving activities from local materials to be used in making traditional dresses.