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Urban life, as opposed to rural life, is a form of socio-cultural interaction characterized by its tendency to promote , anonymous and extra-family relationships. The city tends towards specialization and heterogeneity. Journalistic discourse constitutes a way of urban articulation that stimulates interactions and contributes to the construction of processes of socio-cultural identification. This article is part of a wider project whose aim is to search the ways in which journalistic discourse was constructed in relation to socio-cultural identification in the city of Buenos Aires in the period 1800-1825. In this paper the mechanisms of identity formation in Buenos Aires and their interaction with the socio-political, socio-economical and socio-cultural spheres are analyzed from evidence appearing in the first River Plate newspaper, Telégrafo Mercantil, edited in 1801 and 1802. Beginning with an analysis of the key words, we set to search Buenos Aires urban imaginary, which the newspaper contributes to reinforce as a site of collective interaction. The city appears as a social, political, economical and cultural projection, which highlights the importance of Buenos Aires and contrasts it with life in the countryside presented as of inferior hierarchy. Thus, an urban project is developed, related to elements of belonging and identification, which cannot be equaled in its realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]