Education
Barata graduated from the University of Coimbra, where he studied surgery, philosophy and mathematics and was introduced to Enlightenment ideas that were popular in academia at the time.
Barata gained experience with slave labor as a farmer of cane sugar in the town of Abrantes (current Camaçari). Together with Professor Francisco Muniz Barreto and others, he was a member of the first Masonic Lodge in Brazil, the "Knights of the Light Shop", founded in Salvador in 1797. The following year, he attended the casting Bahia (1798), being held by legal authorities afterward.
Some say that he was the editor of the Manifesto to the People Bahiense, which urged the people to revolt.