This thesis studies the principal work of Angel Rama, La ciudad letrada (1984), as a focal point in the field of Latin American Cultural Studies. The analysis is carried out by first creating a close reading of the text, wherein the central concepts of the work are established and unpacked. This operation is important because the contributions and limits of the work have not been submitted to an extensive analysis in the critical literature. The theory of the Lettered City is then related to Rama's intellectual trajectory and to the critical assessments of selected authors. Finally, both the theory and its critics are analyzed from the present, in hindsight, in order to reach a critical balance of the contributions of both La ciudad letrada and its critics. We conclude that both have suffered from a certain silence on the voices of women, sexual minorities and other popular voices.