Ciudad Bolívar

Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuelan city situated on the Orinoco River some 250 miles from its mouth and the capital of the state of Bolívar. Founded in 1764 as Santo Tomé de la Nueva Guayana, it took on the name of Angostura in 1768 because of its location at a narrows. In 1849, it was renamed Ciudad Bolívar in honor of Venezuela's liberator.

During the Wars of Independence, Simón Bolívar established his headquarters at Angostura and on 15 March 1819 convened the Congress of Angostura, the ruling body of his loyalist government. Ciudad Bolívar suffered from the war in the region and never fully recovered its prewar prosperity because of local struggles for power that followed the independence movement.

Ciudad Bolívar always provided an important link in Venezuela's waterway system. Its principal exports included gold, cattle, cacao, horses, mules, tobacco, rubber, bitters, hides, timber, and other forest products. The city inaugurated the first bridge crossing the Orinoco River, the puente Angostura, in 1967, linking the region to the rest of the country. In 2005 the population was estimated at 292,833 inhabitants.

See alsoAngostura, Congress of; Bolívar, Simón.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Briceño, Tarcila. Comercio por los ríos Orinoco y Apure durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Caracas: Gobernación del Estado Bolívar, Dirección de Educación, Comisión de Historia Regional, Fondo Editorial Tropykos, 1993.

Ewell, Judith. Venezuela: A Century of Change (1984).

Lombardi, John V. People and Places in Colonial Venezuela (1976), and Venezuela: The Search for Order, the Dream of Progress (1982).

Rodríguez, Manuel Alfredo. La ciudad de la Guayana del Rey. Caracas: Ediciones Centauro, 1990.

                                   Winthrop R. Wright

Angostura The best known of the bitters, widely used in cocktails; a secret blend of herbs and spices, including the bitter aromatic bark of either of two trees of the orange family (Galipea officinalis, Cusparia felorifuga). Invented in 1818 by Dr Siegert in the town of Angostura (now Ciudad Bolivar) in Venezuela, originally as a medicine, and now made in Trinidad. A few drops of Angostura in gin makes a ‘pink gin’.

an·gos·tu·ra / ˌanggəˈst(y)oŏrə/ (also angostura bark) • n. an aromatic bitter bark from certain South American trees, used as a flavoring, and formerly as a tonic and to reduce fever.

Angostura (formerly also Angustura). Name of a town (now Ciudad Bolivar) in Venezuela; applied to (i) Angostura bark (XVIII), exported from Angostura and formerly used as a febrifuge and tonic, (ii) Angostura bitters (XIX; P.), a tonic first made in Angostura.

Angostura (family Rutaceae) A genus comprising 30 species, found in tropical America, in which the flowers are sympetalous and zygomorphic. The bark is the basis of Angostura bitters.