This thesis analyses the contemporary significance of the urban cronica, a widespread genre of literary journalism in Latin America, in Mexico City (Mexico) and Guayaquil (Ecuador) as an intermediate genre between high and low culture. It is my opinion that sociological approximations to the modern cultural field, while appropriately accounting for the nature of the cultural divisions between literature and mass culture, have not provided a satisfactory account of the area of overlap that exists between the two and of the nature of the cultural practices that are situated within it. The cronica, a genre which in the last decades of the 20th century acquired a new social prominence as a record of everyday life in the city and as a place where marginalised and neglected social actors and practices could be represented, offers a privileged terrain in which these kinds of cultural relations can be explored. This thesis examines the contemporary significance of the cronica in the press of Mexico City and Guayaquil. It focuses on the relation to and representation of mass culture and social movements in the cronica as central thematic lines of the genre, and analyses the particular trajectories of two authors, Emiliano Perez Cruz, from Mexico City, and Jorge Martillo, from Guayaquil. It also devotes particular attention to the analysis of cultural reception and the way specific cronicas are read and related to the everyday lives and experiences of readers, thus questioning generalised assumptions about legitimate taste which affirm its disconnection and distance from practical concerns and the strict separation between art and life.