De­spite the cre­ativ­i­ty in South Mas, mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors ex­pressed con­cern that not enough is be­ing done to pro­tect and pro­mote San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val.

Spec­ta­tors—and even po­lice of­fi­cers—were left dis­ap­point­ed yes­ter­day, not by the qual­i­ty of mas, but by the slow start and the re­duced num­ber of par­tic­i­pat­ing bands.

Sta­cy Lee Ling, who brought a sec­tion to South­ern Mas As­so­ciates, said she is de­ter­mined to fight for San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val. She agreed with San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris that the city de­serves more fund­ing from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion.

“Yes, we want some prizes. Do­ing this, mar­ket­ing, try­ing to shop around and get play­ers and mas­quer­aders—the long nights prepar­ing and de­sign­ing cos­tumes—we need to get some­thing for this. We need to make it worth it,” Lee Ling said.

She added that one of the chal­lenges is the ten­den­cy to com­pare San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val with Port-of-Spain’s, de­spite the two be­ing very dif­fer­ent.

De­spite the set­backs, Lee Ling ex­pressed con­fi­dence that San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val can re­claim its glo­ry days and urged stake­hold­ers and busi­ness own­ers to unite to reignite the vi­bran­cy in San Fer­nan­do mas.

Even with­out judg­ing this year due to fund­ing is­sues, 12 bands reg­is­tered for the pa­rade, and the mas­quer­aders who par­tic­i­pat­ed brought en­er­gy and ex­cite­ment to the streets.

— Sascha Wil­son