Barroso made his name as a journalist and was for a time involved with the
socialist Clube
Maximo Gorki. However, his politics became more conservative after he secured his law degree in
Rio de Janeiro in 1910. He soon became an important figure in the
Ceará state, serving variously as Secretary of the Interior and Justice, and being elected a Representative in the National Congress. He even formed part of the Brazilian delegation to the
Paris Peace Conference of 1919. 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. In 1933, Barroso joined the Brazilian Integralist Action, which had
fascist characteristics. He soon became the head of the extreme anti-Jewish faction within the Brazilian Integralist Action. Noted for his hard-line
antisemitism, he took charge of the
Brazilian Integralist Action Militia from 1934 to 1936 before being appointed to the party's Supreme Council. An extensive writer, his polemical works at this time included many anti-semitic books and newspaper articles in
Fon-Fon and
Século XX magazines. Political differences caused Barroso to be regarded as dangerous by the more constitutionally minded
Integralista party's leader,
Plínio Salgado, who suspended him from collaborating for six months with the party's newspaper,
A Ofensiva. 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. 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. However Barroso was never tried due to a lack of evidence of his involvement in the attempted
coup. 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). He died in
Rio de Janeiro, aged 70. He was mentioned as a relevant intellectual in a publication that lists extreme-right activists from the whole world. A museum in
Fortaleza, his home town, the
Museu Gustavo Barroso, bears his name. == Works ==