Acatitla station

Neighbouring stations

• ALine APeñón Viejo ← Acatitla → Santa Marta

The story behind the icon

The station icon is the pictogram of the Day Reed of the Aztec Solar Calendar, taken from the atlas of Durán. Acatitla means in Nahuatl among the reeds. Acatitla was an old kingdom whose records suggest that it probably has the same origin as the town of Los Reyes Acaquilpan, both being settlements founded by emigrants of Acolhua origin.

As is usual in every pre-Hispanic town of the Valley of Mexico, the evangelisers built a temple after the Spanish conquest (this was on what are now the streets of Benito Juárez and Francisco I. Madero, where the church and convent of Santa Martha Acatitla stand, built by Franciscan friars in the 16th century), on a pre-Hispanic base.

For a time it housed a military barracks, and the ground floor is walled up. Another of the well-known buildings of this place is the penitentiary built in the seventies.