He soon became an important figure in Ceará state, serving variously as Secretary of the Interior and Justice, and being elected a Representative in the National Congress.

[1] He would later rise to hold such positions as president of the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) and secretary-general of the International Committee of Legal Advisers.

[1] However Barroso continued to pursue his antisemitic ideals, translating The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Portuguese and even suggesting setting up concentration camps.

[1] Following the formation of the Estado Novo dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1938–1945), Barroso was arrested in 1938 after the Brazilian Integralist Action attempted a violent coup d´etat.

He subsequently left political activism and became largely accepting of Getúlio Vargas later constitutional government (1951–1954), serving as a special ambassador to Uruguay (1952) and Peru (1954).

[10] A keen Folklorist, Barroso built up a collection of exhibits relating to Brazil's past at the National Historical Museum (Portuguese: Museu Histórico Nacional) in Rio de Janeiro and produced around 50 non-political books including historical and regional novels, folklore studies and biographies of Brazilian national military heroes such as General Osório and Admiral Tamandaré.

[1] Barroso was often linked with the neorealist school of Brazilian literature, although he differed from the neorealism typified by the likes of Erico Verissimo, Amando Fontes and Telmo Vergara by his emphasis on rural rather than urban settings.

[1][14] As Brazil had relatively few Jews by then, Barroso's anti-semitic writings tended to focus on the international conspiracy theory of Jewish world control, as espoused notably in his book "The Paulista Synagogue".