Altepetl

The altepetl, in Pre-Columbian and Spanish conquest-era Aztec society, was the local, ethnically based political entity. The word is a combination of the Nahuatl words ā-tl, meaning water, and tepē-tl, meaning mountain.
Nahuatl scholars Lisa Sousa, Stafford Poole, and James Lockhart have stated:

A characteristic Nahua mode was to imagine the totality of the people of a region or of the world as a collection of altepetl units and to speak of them on those terms.

They prefer the Nahuatl term over any English-language approximation. They argue that in many of the documents pertaining to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the word āltepētl is often used as a translation of the Spanish Ciudad de México (Mexico City), a translation that has colored the interpretation of the texts and conceptions of Nahua society.

The concept is comparable to Maya cah and Mixtec ñuu.

References

García Martínez, Bernardo (2001). "Community Kingdoms: Central Mexico (Nahua)". In David Carrasco (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America. vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 238–239. ISBN 0-19-510815-9. OCLC 44019111. 

Gibson, Charles (1983) [1964]. The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0912-2. OCLC 9359010. 

Lockhart, James (1996) [1992]. The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2317-6. OCLC 24283718. 

Noguez, Xavier (2001). "Altepetl". In David Carrasco (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America. vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 12–13. ISBN 0-19-510815-9. OCLC 44019111. 

Sousa, Lisa; Stafford Poole, and James Lockhart (trans. and eds.) (1998). The Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega's Huei tlamahuiçoltica of 1649. UCLA Latin American studies, vol. 84; Nahuatl studies series, no. 5. Stanford & Los Angeles, CA: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications. ISBN 0-8047-3482-8. OCLC 39455844.