Bolívar’s "Discurso de Angostura" and the constitution of the people.

This introduction provides a close reading of Simón Bolívar’s Discurso de Angostura (1819) as an attempt to understand the relationship between revolution and constitution within the frame of the civil war which inflamed Venezuela after the declaration of independence. While constitution is usually conceived by modern political thought as the act which puts an end to revolution by formalizing the constituent will of the people, in South America it emerges as a device to realize the preconditions of the revolution itself.