de Carvalho grew up in villages south of Liquica on the north coast of East Timor, and was 9 years old when in 1975 his father was murdered by members of FRETILIN. In the same year Indonesia occupied East Timor. He hid in the jungle until the age of 13, and became a resistance fighter against the period of Indonesian occupation. In 1988, with his education disrupted by the war, Carvalho graduated from the SMA 5 school in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He later joined RENETIL, the Resistência Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste, East Timor's leading student resistance movement. de Carvalho was involved in the publication of the first RENETIL magazines. In 1990 he graduated from Gadjah Mada University with a degree in environmental sciences. One week after the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, Carvalho was arrested by Indonesian police and detained without trial for three weeks. The reason was his participation in a protest in Jakarta.