tenamitl (IG1529:N37)

The iconographic element of the wall delimits an area glossed “este es el peñol donde solía estar el pueblo” (this is the crag where the pueblo was located), or in other words the site of Teotenango before the arrival of the Spaniards and the community’s relocation in a more accessible, less defensible location. There is a structure on the crag or hill depicted on the map glossed as an hermita (chapel), but no rendition of the old townsite that preceded it. The wall appears to have run around the hill below the townsite and may well have been constructed as a defensive measure. The tenamitl is the only element on the map rendered in traditional Indigenous style. All other structures are depicted in a very European manner, suggesting that the artist was deliberately picturing the wall as a “before” to the new townsite’s “after” (see the historical contextualizing image). Today the old site of Teotenango has been excavated, including many buildings in its ceremonial center and at least part of the defensive wall depicted on the RG map.

Wanda Tommasi de Magrelli cites Orozco y Berra as calling this "mythical" wall a "cortina con almenas," a curtain with merlons. See her book, La cerámica funeraria de Teotenango (1978, 14).