The host Carlos Massa, popularly known as Ratinho, turns 67 soon. Known for his irreverence and entrepreneurship, Ratinho is another descendant of successful Italians in Brazil.
The farmers Domingos Massa e Maria Talarico Massa, children of immigrants who arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century, had five children. Carlos Roberto Massa was born in Águas de Lindóia , a city in São Paulo close to the border of Minas Gerais, on February 15, 1956. He was the couple's third child.
Massa family moves to Paraná
Besides “Carlinhos”, as Ratinho was called in his childhood, the family was made up of the brothers Zélia, Laércio, Claudiney and Walter, the latter who died at a young age, when Ratinho was 18 years old. The younger brother, Ney (nickname Claudiney) became a businessman and produced shows in several states.
Ratinho was raised until he was four years old in the Minas Gerais municipality of Mount Zion and later moved with his family to the north of Paraná, at the beginning of the migratory flow interior of the country, when workers were looking for new fertile land for coffee farming.
The Massa family settled in Marumbi, in Serrinha region, a municipality with around five thousand inhabitants. While his father worked on the farm, Carlos Massa discovered his vocation for commerce, selling lollipops at the circus.
Vocation for communication
But it was playing football with his friends that he earned the nickname Ratinho, due to his fragile physical structure and his agility. In the municipality of Jandaia do Sul, close to Marumbi, began his political and commercial career at the age of 13.
He had no vocation for work on earth, but I did a little bit of everything. He was a theater artist, lunchbox porter, butcher, car washer, shoeshine boy, dead body cleaner, market stallholder, real estate agent, picture seller, bus station barbecue seller, X-ray operator and book seller.
A born communicator, his performance selling products at street fairs caught attention and an invitation to work at radio station location. His debut was on the program Mouth on Trombone, with short insertions in the programming of Rádio Guaicará. Then he went to Jandaia City Radio, where his popularity increased.
politician Carlos Massa
In the late 1970s, his popularity as a radio host led him to enter politics. In 1976 he was elected councilor in Jandaia do Sul, finishing the election as the most voted in the city and the youngest politician elected in Paraná, at 20 years old.
Ratinho was also a Cabinet Officer at the Secretariat of Culture and Sports of the State of Paraná, from 1983 to 1986 and state deputy between 1991 and 1995.
He debuted on television in 1989, as a police reporter on the program Jail, which was broadcast by OM (Grupo Organizações Martinez), currently CNT, where he also presented the program 190 Urgent.
On the program Cadeia, he worked alongside the presenter Luiz Carlos Alborghetti, from whom he inherited the extravagant style of presenting the news, as well as the use of a truncheon, which he would bang on the table when he got excited against those accused of crimes.
In 1990 he won the election of federal deputy for PRN, the party of the owner of its station, who was also the regional president of the party, José Carlos Martinez, and of the winning candidate for president, Fernando Collor de Mello. His stay in Brasília was described by Ratinho as “the worst experience of his life”.
Success on television
Mouse debuted in Record TV in September 1997, on the program Free Mouse. From 20:30 pm to 22 pm, in one month it reached Globo and SBT on Ibope. His way of conducting the program, with improvisations, whistling, jokes with the audience and the agitation with the baton demanding punishment for corrupt politicians, made Ratinho known throughout the country.
In 1998, Carlos Massa was hired by SBT, where he started to present the Mouse Program, in addition to participating in other attractions, such as SBT Palace Hotel, Jornal da Massa and Você é o Jurado.
A fanatical Palmeiras fan, Ratinho has been married since 1981 to Solange Martinez Massa, with whom he had children Rafael Massa, Gabriel Massa and Carlos Roberto Massa Júnior, the Junior Mouse, elected governor of Paraná in 2019 and re-elected in 2022.
Origin of the surname Massa
According to the Italian website Cognomix, the surname Massa is a toponym, a name derived from a location, with several probable origins. Among them are the city of Massa, in the province of Benevenuto, Campania region, and the cities of Pasta della Lucania, in Salerno, and Massa di Somma, in the metropolitan region of Naples, both also in Campania.
Although widespread throughout Italy, Massa is a surname with a strong core in Liguria and southern Italy. Sardinia, campania e Piedmont, but there are also secondary lineages in Emilia-Romagna.
There are approximately 6.984 Massa families in Italy, with the highest concentrations in Campania (91.368), Piedmont (1.313) and Liguria (807).
The surname Massa is the 34th most common in the Liguria region, the 30th in the province of Genoa and the most popular in the city of Vauda Canavese, in the province of Turin, Piedmont region.
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