 He was the starting point guard for Puerto Rico when they won the gold medal in the 2011 Pan American Games and the silver medal in the 2007 Pan American Games.Barea was born in the municipality of Mayagüez in the west coast of Puerto Rico in 1984 to parents Marta (née Mora) and Jaime Barea.With an engineer father and a mother who was a retired professor as well as volleyball and tennis coach, he grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of Mayagüez.