It will build but it won't include the docs in the final package. I
don't want to fix that because even if someone doesn't want the pam
docs  and doesn't have tetex installed he should be able to build pam.

The problem is if tetex-latex isn't installed, pam will fail to build.

Nope - I've tried it - uninstalled all tetex packages and tried to
build latest pam. It builds fine, however the final rpm doesn't
include html docs of course .