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Un­der the cov­er of dark­ness, com­peti­tors in this year’s J’Ou­vert King and Queen com­pe­ti­tion con­verged on South Quay, Port-of-Spain, haul­ing tow­er­ing cos­tumes and elab­o­rate props for one of Car­ni­val’s most bit­ing show­cas­es of so­cial com­men­tary. By the time the first bands be­gan to move, mas­quer­aders had al­ready trained their satire on lo­cal politi­cians, ris­ing tax­es, traf­fic penal­ties, and even world lead­ers, us­ing tra­di­tion­al mas to lam­poon the head­lines dom­i­nat­ing na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion.

While the spec­ta­tors in down­town Port-of-Spain have been dwin­dling in re­cent years, there ap­peared to be a slight in­crease this time around, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Kitch­en­er Stands, where clus­ters of on­look­ers gath­ered to take in the tra­di­tion­al mas pre­sen­ta­tions. Even so, over­all crowd den­si­ty along some sec­tions of the route was thin­ner than in peak years, re­flect­ing broad­er shifts in how au­di­ences en­gage with Car­ni­val events. Re­turn­ing cham­pi­on Richard Mon­tano se­cured the J’Ou­vert King ti­tle for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year with his po­lit­i­cal por­tray­al, “U-EN-SEE Run­ning D Corn-Tree.”