Angostura was the name of the town in Eastern Venezuela that was renamed Ciudad Bolívar in 1846. The town lies at a narrowing of the River Orinoco and the name was a contraction of the town's full descriptive name, 'Santo Tomé de Guayana de Angostura del Orinoco', "Saint Thomas of Guyana of the narrows of the Orinoco."

The town is most famous for the 1819 Congress of Angostura in which Simón Bolívar and other revolutionaries in the First Republic of Venezuela, established various territories in the newly liberated Latin America. Bolivar's famous prophetic and inspiring address to the congress (see link), distinguishing the Venezuelan character from the North American one, with its "weak and complicated system" of government, and emphasizing the Venezuelan revolutionaries' extraordinary and complicated position ("We are not Europeans; we are not Indians"), advocated a parliamentary system based on the British model, with a hereditary senate.

The town also gave its name to the Angostura tree (Cusparia febrifuga) which grows in the area. The bark of the small shrub-like tree was traditionally used as a bitter tonic and fever reducer. Angostura bitters were invented there, although the company has since moved to Trinidad.

External link

• Bolivar's message to the Congress of Angostura (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1819bolivar.html)