WHAT a coincidence!
As Bacolod City celebrates this year’s MassKara Festival, a new sugar crisis casts a shadow over the festivities. Millgate prices have plunged to P2,200 per 50-kilogram (kg) bag — far below the P2,450 production cost — driven by a flood of imported refined sugar.
Sugar planters are “crying,” farm laborers are struggling, and a bleak Christmas looms for Negros Occidental’s signature industry.
This scenario is a stark reminder of how MassKara itself was born out of crisis 45 years ago.
Rewind to 1980
The festival emerged amid two major calamities — a near-collapse of Negros Occidental’s sugar industry and the tragic sinking of M/V Don Juan in Mindoro waters, which claimed 28 lives and left 115 missing.
Sugar and MassKara have always been intertwined. The festival was a way to mask grief with smiles, to celebrate joy despite adversity. Today, as the sugar industry faces another downturn, MassKara’s resilience is once again being tested.
Financially, the crisis may affect visitor turnout, but MassKara’s true spirit goes beyond numbers. It has always been a crisis-driven festival, a battlefield where the city hides its bitterness, frustration, and sorrow behind vibrant masks and street dances.
MassKara Festival’s ‘sweetener’ through the years
Forty-six years of facing economic, social, and political upheavals prove that MassKara is not just world-renowned — it is disaster-proof. Without a crisis, MassKara would not be complete. Today’s sugar woes serve as its latest “sweetener,” a reminder that the festival’s roots remain deeply planted in the resilience of Bacolodnons./PN
