Carnaval de Curitiba em recortes do acervo Maé da Cuíca

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyze the representation of Curitiba’s Carnival in periodic journals from the 1990s, in order to comprehend the possible relations between the content displayed in the news and the formation of the discourses regarding this manifestation that circulate around the city. For such, were consulted newspaper clippings from the collection of Maé da Cuíca in the Paranaense Museum. Ismael Cordeiro (1927-2012), “Mestre Maé da Cuica”, founded the first “Samba School” of Curitiba and during his life collected an extensive amount of objects and documents tied to the Carnival world. For viability reasons the investigation proposed on this paper elects a cut in the timeline of the documents of the collection, among the diversity of approaches that the material extension enables. Curitiba’s Carnival is often characterized as non-existent, either by the depreciation in relation to the magnitude of the parades of the Samba Schools of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, or by a perception of the festivity as something extrinsic to Curitiba’s identity. This tension can be seen on the pages of the newspapers, transitioning between social, political, cultural, economic, geographical, and ethnic-racial problems, mobilized by the Curitiba’s Carnival thematic.