the essential oil obtained from the leaves of lantana camara var. moritziana (otto & dietr.) l'opez-palacios collected at rubio, t'achira state, venezuela, was obtained by hydrodistillation in a clevenger trap (0.1% yield). the oil was analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (gc/ms) on hp gc-ms system, model 5973, identifying 33 compounds (97.1%) of which the major components were germacrene d (31.0%), followed by beta-caryophyllene (14.8%), a-phellandrene (6.7%), limonene (5.7%) and 1,8-cineole (5.2%). evaluation of the antibacterial activity by agar diffusion method with discs against international reference bacteria (staphylococcus aureus, enterococcus faecalis, escherichia coli, klebsiella pneumoniae, salmonella typhi, pseudomonas aeruginosa) showed growing inhibition of e. faecalis and s. aureus at mic of 350 mg/ml and 400 mg/ml, respectively.