This dissertation proposes that a literary corpus surrounding the configuration of Latin American national subjects conditioned the spatial organization of the region's capital cities. I use novels, manuals of good manners, journal articles, and maps to explain how the normative behaviors prescribed by discourses of political subjectivity gave rise to a fragmented cartography of the city. This cartography served to legitimize the elite's right to governance and limit the participation of those with non-normative identities within the political borders of the national community. Although this dissertation mainly concentrates on the spatial relations of power and domination that emerged from the construction of an ideal model of citizenship, it also explores the way subaltern peoples resisted their place in the city by claiming urban space for their own cultural practices.