Is Carnival for Sale?

By Fr Robert Christo, Vicar for Communications

How a few money moguls hijacked the festival and squeezed out the small man

Carnival has a soul. It was born on Piccadilly Street and in Laventille yards, shaped by the breath of the small man, the drum of the poor, the craft of the creative, and the joy of a people who understood celebration as soul, not spectacle.

But today the ground beneath us has shifted. A new tribe has risen, not of culture but of capital. A tiny circle of money-hungry moguls, a mafia-like oligopoly, now holds the reins of the fête economy and dictates the face of celebration in Trinidad and Tobago. What once belonged to the many has been captured by the few.

The fête oligopoly

A small cluster of promoters has the very definition of ‘access’. Their template stretches across the islands, squeezing out anything that does not fit their premium mould. Their capital determines who gets seen, who gets heard, and who gets silenced.

Meanwhile, the orange vendor who once stood by the gate, the snow cone man who sweetened the night, the bottle collector hustling with purpose, the small rum shop feeding a corner crew, the young hustler with a cooler, the pan around the neck side raising funds under the streetlight, all find themselves priced out, fenced out, or regulated out of spaces they helped to build.

The cruel irony is that we are paying the moguls for the privilege of feeling included.

A plea to the senses

Step into a modern all-inclusive built by this oligopoly and your senses will tell the story. You smell the mountain of wasted food. You hear music so loud it drowns the possibility of real conversation. You taste the pressure to overconsume simply because the price was high. You touch the velvet ropes and guarded entrances

designed to separate people. You see a hypersexualised image of freedom that feels more curated than cultural.

Everything is louder, pricier, and more extravagant, yet strangely emptier. As US Bishop Robert Barron notes, when pleasure replaces purpose, the soul shrinks. The Church’s Theology of the Body reminds us that the human body is sacred and is made not for consumption but for communion and relationship.

The small man vs the big hand

Carnival was once an ecosystem. Everybody survived the season. The small man sold something. The vendors cooked something. The Bookman, Sailor, Bat, Dame Lorraine offered a performance for a small change. Communities thrived on the creativity of the wire benders, not the capital of a few businessmen.

But today, a miniature cartel holds the pie, sells the pie, owns the oven, and leases back crumbs to the poor. Their model sidelines the same culture bearers who built Carnival under the bridge and in the backyards of Laventille and Belmont.

Still, rebellion is rising. Patrice Roberts’ free giveback concert has shifted the tone. A new ‘pay-what-you-can’ mas band is pushing a different kind of inclusivity. These movements whisper that the people are tired of being priced out of the festival they created.

The hijack of Monday and Tuesday

The takeover has not stopped at the fetes. Carnival Monday and Tuesday have been quietly captured by the same mafia-like moguls who now curate the ‘ultimate experience’ with militarised branding, uniformed road packages, and choreographed routes that feel more like controlled consumer events than people’s mas.

What was once raw, rootsy, spontaneous, sweaty creativity of the streets has been repackaged into a polished product, marketed as premium and stamped with corporate gloss.

The pure brand of Carnival’s authenticity is fading as the old freedom of Monday wear gives way to a narrow, branded road experience managed by a few and paid for by the many.

Where hedonism replaces heritage

Across the landscape, we are watching a troubling exchange: hedonism overshadowing heritage, elitism replacing inclusivity, consumption swallowing creativity, fashion outshining folklore, commercialisation erasing community, and sexual spectacle distorting a God-given sexuality.

When a fête becomes a marketplace of bodies, wanton greed, and alcohol rather than a celebration of beauty, resilience, community, history and belonging, something sacred is lost.

A carnival at the crossroads

We must now ask ourselves honest questions: Who are we becoming? What are we celebrating? Who is benefitting? Who is being pushed out?

The Church is not anti-Carnival. We are a people of Resurrection joy. But joy turns into idolatry when freedom mutates into exploitation, when creativity becomes commodity, illicit sex acts replace sacred sexuality and when the poor disappear from the streets they built with their sweat.

The prophets always asked the same piercing question: Where is the poor? If the answer is ‘outside the ropes’, then something holy is being stolen.

Reclaiming the road

We do not seek to go backward. We want Carnival to go deeper. This movement is pro-Carnival, pro-creativity, pro-people, pro-small man.

Let us guard fiercely what began in the yards of Laventille and Piccadilly. If we lose that root, we lose the whole tree.