Students laud Sagayan Festival

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - For agriculture students Junambai Beto and Elorde Delon Jr., life in school has just been made even more exciting with their participation starting this year in the celebration of the anniversary of Maguindanao province, and the Moro-inspired Sagayan Festival.

Beto, an ethnic Maguindanaon, and Delon, who belongs to the non-Moro Teduray highland community, are among the more than 4,000 beneficiaries of the provincial government’s Maguindanao Program for Educational Assistance and Community Empowerment (MagPEACE).

MagPEACE scholars are obliged to participate in the Sagayan Festival, and in the November 22 annual founding anniversary of the province.

For Delon, joining the Sagayan celebration is not just enjoying the two-week revelries, but also learning the deeper history of Maguindanao’s peoples –  the Muslim, Christian and lumad residents that are residing in the province's 36 towns.

“By mingling with our fellow scholars from across the province, we learn to respect each other’s cultural differences. We bond together and unite in our traditional and religious similarities,” Delon, a student of the Upi Agricultural School in Maguindanao’s North Upi town, said.

This year’s February 1-14 third Sagayan Festival will be the last. The event will be held simultaneously with the week-long yearly commemoration every November with Maguindanao’s founding anniversary starting 2015.

Maguindanao was created in 1974 through a decree by then President Ferdinand Marcos. The territory of Maguindanao was carved out of the vast Cotabato Province that once spanned from what are now cities of Kidapawan in the north, to Gen. Santos in the South, up to the coasts of now chartered Sarangani and Sultan Kudarat provinces.

A member of the provincial board, Bobby Katambak, said it was Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu who had wanted to have the two events fused not just for austerity, but to enable them to carry out medical and dental services during a mixed Sagayan-provincial anniversary event every November.

Mangudadatu organized and led the first Sagayan Festival in 2011, in celebration of the then improving security situation and investment climate in Maguindanao.

“We now look forward, this early, to a more colorful, meaningful joint celebration of the Sagayan Festival and the anniversary of Maguindanao in November 2015,” said Rochele Salik, a MagPEACE education student.

Salik said MagPEACE scholars are excited every time they converge in Buluan town to participate in the Sagayan Festival.

“(The) revelries speak well of our origin as Maguindanaons, something we ought to remember always,” Salik said.

The mayor of North Upi, Ramon Piang, an ethnic Teduray chieftain, said one good way of propagating Muslim-Christian solidarity in the province is for students to converge regularly and talk about each other’s “love for peace,” and the uniqueness of each other’s cultures and traditions.

Piang, as member of the government’s peace panel, helped craft the power-sharing annex to the October 15, 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro (FAB).

The FAB is the basis for the establishment of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front of a Bangsamoro entity to govern Moro-dominated areas in Southern Mindanao.

Another MagPEACE scholar, Lorein Ladrido, who is taking up elementary education, said that through the festival, she learned that  Maguindanaons have a rich history as people of the marshlands, also referred to as the “perennially flooded plains” of Central Mindanao.

The Sagayan is a centuries-old traditional Maguindanao war-and-courtship dance that depicts the readiness of locales to defend their women and children, their lands, and their Islamic faith, from aggression.

The Sagayan dance, until today, is still an indispensable part as an essential highlight of big celebrations and wedding events among native Maguindanaons.

“And that culture will never be outgrown or forgotten because we have more than 4,000 MagPEACE scholars that will help us preserve it,” Mangudadatu told reporters covering the  festival.

Mangudadatu started the MagPEACE scholarship program with only more than 700 beneficiaries after his first election as governor in 2010. - John Unson