[nb 1] He obtained his political influence and the control of the region adjacent to the Buría River after leading the first African rebellion in the country's history.
[4] In 1517, Charles V authorized the capture and displacement of thousands of Africans into slavery to the Caribbean, due to a desire for free labor in the (mining and agrarian) Spanish settlements of the region.
Between 1530 and 1533, the progression of the colonization of Trinidad and Venezuela attracted local settlers to that area of South America (among them, Conquistador Antonio de Sedeño).
[12] Speculation about a noble ascendancy has been argued by some authors based on the organization of his kingdom, likely from the Portuguese slave raids in Angola or Mozambique.
[13][unreliable source] The arrival of royals as enslaved captives was recorded in other instances at Puerto Rico including the case of a prince that was captured by an opposing group and sold to traders, eventually being sent back to Africa following his transport to Manatí in 1832, where sugar baron José Ramon Fernández noticed that other Africans treated the young man (who was in his 20s) as their liege and discovered his lineage.
[14] Melchor López called him a "biáfra", indicating that ethnically his parents may have been part of a group that first originated between Nigeria and the Muni River (which is adjacent to the Bight of Biafra), before being brought to the New World.
From there, he employed the cover of the night to stealthy approach the mines, where he began convincing the enslaved Africans and natives to flee and join his effort.
[20] Afterwards, in the document that served as proof of the military services that of Captain Diego Hernández de Serpa, the events were discussed in detail.
Miguel's settlement was built in a strategic location, near an inlet or cove, with natural protection on the side that faced a river with an untraversable rock formation.
[20] Herrera makes mention that the Africans had moved to a "land in a hard place" in his account about the attack on Nueva Segovia de Barquisimeto, but no other known document references this.
[24] According to Spanish documents, a hierarchy was created and the women were assigned to the men, arbitrarily establishing the composition of the respective couples.
War preparations followed the organization of the citizens, beginning with the manufacturing of spears and darts made from the metal of the mining equipment.
[26] These were added to the kingdom's arsenal, initially composed of swords that had been gathered during the siege at the mines and with bows/arrows brought by the natives that joined the cause.
The king ordered an attack on Nueva Segovia de Barquisimeto, reputedly pronouncing a war speech that emphasized liberty, arguing that despite "God [having] made [them] free, like the other people" the Spanish had made them slaves, criticizing the Iberians for applying different standards for slavery than several of the other European countries (this early in the history of the New World, countries like France, Germany or Italy mostly adopted war prisoners as slaves).
[17] Nueva Segovia de Barquisimeto requested further help from El Tocuyo, whose town council also feared that it could be attacked, organized its forces under captain Diego Losada.
According to Juan Castellanos, Diego De la Fuente went ahead by himself and captured one of Miguel's men and brought him to Losada's encampment.
[31] They intended to prevent entry into the settlement, but after clashing with the Spanish, they retreated inside, but the doors were improperly closed allowing the Europeans to breach the interior.
[34] The king's men were immediately demoralized, with his death having a direct effect on the outcome of the battle when the Spanish noted and attacked with more eagerness.
[10] In 1956, Jesús M. Pérez Morales and Enrique Luch S. de Mons published Negro Miguel, el esclavo rey, which presents a fictionalized account of his life that give him the rank of Captain within sultan Suleiman I's military.
[10] Douglas Palmas' Uroboros (1976), a winner of El Nacional's yearly short story competition, makes direct reference to "avenging" Miguel among other figures that the author perceives as victims of oppression.
[37] In 1991, Alfadil Ediciones published Raúl Agudo Freites' eponymous Miguel de Buría, a historical novel that uses the king as inspiration for a fictional take on his reign.
[42] Some researchers have argued that the deity itself is a cultural representation of Queen Guiomar, due to the proximity of the cult's origin to the kingdom's historic location, but the hypothesis has not been confirmed.
[45] Alejo Carpentier wrote poetry about Miguel and his defiance to build a kingdom in white territory in El siglo de las luces.
[46] The opera El Negro Miguel by Héctor Pellegatti suppose the imaginary construction of the freedom of the black slave in Venezuela.
[47] Hilda De Luca was awarded an honorific mention at the 2009 Municipal Theatre Prize for her work La Cantata del Rey Miguel.
: Voices from the Grassroots, author Carlos Martín established that the origin of the Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations can be traced back to "the first uprisings by Africans here, such as was carried out by Miguel de Buría in Yaracuy in 1552".
[50] The titular rebellion in La rebelión del Negro Miguel: y otros temas de Africanía served as the starting point of another similar book, this one published by the regional Fundación Buría.
[51] In 1908, while discussing gold fever in Venezuela and dismissing most of the historical mines and reported deposits as fiction, author Jesús Muñoz Tébar called the events "the ridiculous story of the negro Miguel".
[52] Likewise, his contemporary Venezuela-based French historian Louis Alfred Silvano Pratlong Bonicell Gal (popularly known as "Hermano Nectario María") criticized Aguada's version and argued that Miguel's followers most likely surrendered after he fell, bringing in racial issues and what he calls an "inferiority complex".
[34] British scholar James Duncan expressed distaste for the black inhabitants and also criticized it as a "short-lived petty African monarchy" and compared it to Brazilian quilombo of Palmares.