Miguel Rivera

"No more hiding, Dante. I gotta seize my moment!"

- Miguel

Miguel Rivera is the main protagonist of the Pixar film, Coco. Miguel is only twelve years old but aspires to be a great musician. The Rivera family has a generations-old ban on music, yet despite this Miguel's dreams remain firm. When accidentally invokes a curse that sends him to the Land of the Dead, Miguel seeks out his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz, to help him return to the Land of the Living before he is stuck there forever.

Despite his family's objection of him to become a musician, Miguel is innate musician to the marrow of his bones.

Official Description

 * Miguel is a 12-year-old aspiring musician who struggles against his family's generations-old ban on music. When a magical mishap lands him in the Land of the Dead, Miguel seeks out his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz, to help him return to the Land of the Living before it's too late.

Abilities
Miguel has an ear for music and is a fast learner, as he had taught himself how to play a guitar by watching one of Ernesto's old films with the guitar that he had built. Indicating a skill for craftsmanship, as he had made it himself and to make it look like his great-great-grandfather's guitar. Miguel's ear of music also has him to posses a good singing voice, which he might have learned from listening to Ernesto and other musicians singing in the plaza, it is very likely that he had inherited music skills from Héctor. Miguel is also fast on his feet, as he was able to outrun and escape from Pepita's "hunt" for him.

Physical appearance
Miguel is a slender young boy with tan skin, black hair, brown eyes, and a mole below his nose, and a dimple on only one side of his mouth. He wears a red hooded jacket with white stripes over a white tank top, blue jeans with cuffs, and black shoes. At the end of the movie, he loses his hoodie and replaced his tank top with a white short-sleeved dress shirt, and the rest of his outfit remains unchanged.

Development
Originally, Miguel was to be an American child who had trouble coping with the death of his mother in the earliest story draft of the film; this would have been resolved with him learning to let go of his grief. However, since this went against the meaning of Día de Los Muertos, Pixar abandoned that concept to prevent misrepresentation as seen in Pocahontas and Ratatouille.<pMiguel's design was inspired by two real-life kids who were Emilio Fuentes (who provided the original scratch voice for Miguel while the movie was in development) and Adriel Arriaga (the son of a character designer). In early drafts and deleted scenes, Miguel was originally called Marco, who was more confident and arrogant. He was originally not cursed when he stole Hector's guitar as it went to the deceased Riveras instead (causing them to sing strangely whenever they open their mouths). He originally was also able to cross the bridge to the Land of the Dead with Hector's guitar as his ticket. Marco was redeveloped into Miguel because the production team realized that Disney had another character named Marco from Star vs. the Forces of Evil who looked exactly like Miguel.

Trivia

 * Miguel is Pixar's first non-Caucasian human protagonist for a full length feature film.
 * Miguel is the second youngest protagonist to appear in a Pixar movie, the youngest being Arlo.
 * His last name is a reference to a Pixar Producer, Jonas Rivera.
 * His last name Rivera, is a reference to El Tigre.