ABSTRACT. It is well-known that da Costa's C-systems of paraconsistent logic do not admit aBlok-Pigozzi algebraization. Still, an algebraic flavored semantics for them has been proposed in the literature, namely using the class of so-called da Costa algebras. However, the precise connection between these semantic structures and the C-systems was never established at the light of the theory of algebraizable logics. In this paper we propose to study the C-systems from an algebraic point of view, and to fill in this gap by using the tools and techniques of the newly developed behavioral approach to abstract algebraic logic. As a by-product of the approach, we also rediscover the bivaluation semantics of the logics.