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🇧🇷 Brazil /Culture & Society

Curitiba newsstand owner posts anti-PT messages

From Folha de S.Paulo · () Portuguese

Translated from Portuguese, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

In-depth Sources not specified Context piece
  • A Curitiba newsstand owner expresses his political stance by posting handwritten criticisms of the PT party and President Lula on his stall.
  • The owner, Maurício Puchalski, has maintained this practice since the Dilma Rousseff era, adapting it from writing his own comments to annotating newspaper clippings.
  • He reflects on the changing media landscape, the decline of print newspapers due to digital news and the pandemic, and his own reading habits, favoring concise information over long texts.

In the heart of Curitiba, between Praça Osório and Boca Maldita, Maurício Puchalski, 70, runs a newsstand that serves as a canvas for his political dissent. Handwritten protests against President Lula and his Workers' Party (PT) adorn the edges of newspaper clippings and are pinned to the outer wall of his stall, Banca Brasil.

Nowadays I pick up the newspaper, take a look, make a comment on it or next to it

— Maurício PuchalskiDescribing his current method of expressing political opinions through annotated newspaper clippings.

Puchalski, who inherited the business from his father, has been expressing his views publicly for years. He began by writing his own comments on newspaper margins and pinning them up, a habit he adopted during Dilma Rousseff's presidency. "Nowadays I pick up the newspaper, take a look, make a comment on it or next to it," he explains, adapting his method to the digital age where he selects and annotates existing news items.

He acknowledges the shift in the media industry, noting that many newsstands in the area no longer sell newspapers. While he still offers them, he points to his refrigerator stocked with drinks as the primary source of income. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the decline of print editions, and Puchalski observes that people now consume news primarily through their phones. His own reading habits reflect this trend; he admits to not reading long texts, preferring to get his information from headlines and highlighted phrases.

What hurt was Covid. Many print editions ended. And people today see the news on their cell phones. A lot of messages, YouTube, cool things and live.

— Maurício PuchalskiReflecting on the impact of the pandemic and digital media on the newspaper industry.

Puchalski's life experiences have shaped his views. After attending a military college and studying civil engineering, he worked as a claims adjuster, traveling extensively across Brazil. This work exposed him to what he calls "malandragem" – trickery or cunning – particularly when dealing with powerful individuals, which led him to leave his corporate job and take over the newsstand in 1983. He sees this "malandragem" as a pervasive issue that harms Brazil, extending into the "underworlds and basements" of politics.

In politics, there are underworlds and basements. There is always an agreement underneath.

— Maurício PuchalskiExpressing his view on the hidden dealings within politics.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Folha de S.Paulo in Portuguese. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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