Oztotlatlauhcan (CmpRG)

On the map, Oztotlatlauhcan is situated next to a small church (see the historical contextualizing image). On this manuscript, churches act as semantic indictors of inhabited places. The church is stylistically typical of the map in that it shows some perspective in its composition, with the structure shown at a bit of an angle that allows two of its four walls to be visible--one with a door, the other with two small arched black windows. Its arched doorway has a kind of lattice-work filling in black. A small bell tower projects upwards above the wall with the two windows. The apex of its arched form boasts a cross, and there is a bell, colored brown (probably to mimic bronze or brass), in an arched opening. All of this betrays Spanish cultural influence in the artist’s work. For more information about the map, see Biblioteca Digital Mexicana, A.C., http://bdmx.mx/documento/mapas-relaciones-geograficas-cempoala-epazoyuca... Mundy, Barbara E., “Mapping Babel: A Sixteenth-Century Indigenous Map from Mexico,” The Appendix, 1:4 (October 2013), and the same author’s book, The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996).