The outnumbered and poorly armed Royalists secured a victory against the Patriot rebels.

After arriving from Port-au-Prince, revolutionaries Simón Bolívar and Juan Bautista Arismendi gathered a force of 700 soldiers at Margarita Island for a new campaign to take the city of Caracas.

[1] On 9 January 1817, 10 days after Bolívar's and Arismendi's arrival in mainland Venezuela, the force, which had been bolstered with 900 more soldiers, was on the way to Puerto Píritu.

During the course of battle, a native force led by José María Charuán, Chief of Clarines tribe,[3] marched through the forest to attack the Patriots from the rear.

This outflanking maneuver caused the Patriot forces to panic, scatter and be massacred.