Once the church has been thoroughly swept and washed clean, a select group of Atitecos assemble to construct the huge temporary Monumento. Like the altarpiece, Nicolás Chavez said that it represents the "entryway into the home of the ancestors at Paq'alib'al." It consists of a framework of roughly-hewn horizontal wood planks supported by Colonial-era twisted columns of the same age and type used on the central altarpiece. The Atitecos then loop twisted ropes around this framework to create an immense gridwork, with a green cross or symbolic tree affixed at the top.