When the going gets tough, the tough get going. In the case of the Bacolodnons, especially back in the 1980s, when everything that could go wrong went wrong in Bacolod—a sugar crisis, a famine, a luxury liner, the MV Don Juan, sinking off the coast of Mindoro, leaving 176 dead—the tough look to the bright side.

Under these circumstances, Masskara was born, a festival that would soon make the smile an emblem of the spirit of resilience that’s become a signature not only of the Bacolodnons but of the rest of the Filipinos. Incidentally, Bacolod is also the city of smiles.

Fast forward to 2023, and Bacolod, like the rest of the world, is just emerging from a years-long spate of challenges, like the pandemic and the sugar shortage of 2022. Times are tough but Bacolodnons are tougher, so this year’s Masskara, whose festivities began on Oct. 7, has been more festive than ever.

When the going gets tough, the tough throw a ball, the MassKarade Ball, and this year’s ball, held on Friday, Oct. 20, at the grand ballroom of Sugarland Hotel, was perhaps the biggest in the festival’s 43-year history, with guests, dressed in fun, chic formals, anything from stylized, modernized barongs Tagalog to ballgowns that harked back to the day Bacolod was Sugarlandia, world capital of sugar barons, when a wedding of legend boasted of champagne flowing from a fountain.

We are no longer as guilty of such conspicuous consumption, but the never-give-up spirit of the Bacolodnons, from which every Filipino in every other region of the Philippines has great lessons to learn, still need to be declared, so MassKarade Ball 2023, presided over by Bacolod Mayor Albee Benitez, with MassKara 2023 chair Jojie Dingcong by his side to make every detail of his vision come to life, wasn’t so much about a show of wealth as it was about acknowledging how people could come together to overcome the troubles of our time and to help each other rise to the challenge.

Among the highlights of the evening was the introduction of this year’s beneficiaries, five students representing different sectors, such as the OFWs, transportation, women’s sector and the youth’s, and the PWDs, who each received ₱100,000 worth of scholarship grants from the funds raised through the MassKarade Ball.

Another highlight was an encapsulation of Bacolod’s history, including its pre-colonial past and its Aeta community, its struggles as a colony under Spain and the United States, World War II, the sugar crisis, the sinking of Don Juan, and more, through a costume parade featuring the 15 candidates of Miss Bacolod MassKara 2023.

MassKara has been cited, as Jojie said in his welcome remarks, “by CNN as one of the 12 best things in the Philippines and by the National Geographic Traveller as one of the must-do events for the world in October,” but last Friday’s star-studded guest list, whose photographs jazz up this page, was yet another proof of the pudding: From a town plaza event in the 1980s, Masskara has become a national event that the rest of the world should experience.