[1] Miquilena began his political career with the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) in the 1940s as Secretary General of the Union of Bus Drivers (Spanish: Sindicato de Autobuseros), allied with President Isaías Medina Angarita.

The PRP was short-lived, lasting from the overthrow of the Gallegos government (in office February 1948-November 1948) until the rise of Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

He was later transferred to a jail in Ciudad Bolivar, Miquilena became friends with Democratic Action politician Simón Alberto Consalvi, stating that "Simon was a man that I think men should be".

Jiménez was overthrown in 1958, and in an attempt to stabilize the fledgling democracy that succeeded the dictatorship, three Venezuelan political parties entered into the Pacto de Punto Fijo.

"[2] In 1961, Miquilena joined the Democratic Republican Union (URD) party and he became a Representative for the state of Falcón in the Venezuelan Chamber of Deputies.

He approved of the Pacto de Punto Fijo believing that Venezuela had a "history of coups and militarism" and that this was a good attempt to solve that problem, though the failure of this system led to Chávez coming to party, which he thought was worse.

[7] In the months before the coup against Chávez in April 2002, Miquilena talked with Fidel Castro and the two agreed that they did not want Venezuela to take the same path as Cuba.

Miquilena declared that it was the incompetence of one of the coup leaders, Pedro Carmona, who had served as president for 36 hours, which restored Chávez to power "by his decree to dissolve the Assembly and by ousting all mayors".

When asked how he would fight back against the Bolivarian government, he said that he would be "in the front line, uniting and gathering people to face the disaster we are suffering" and that "the popular struggle is not armed.

[9][2] Miquilena is featured in the Miguel Otero Silva's La Muerte de Honorio, a novel about the anti-Jiménez resistance movement.