Oztoyocan (CmpRG)

On the map a seam resulting from joining two sheets of paper together runs through the alphabetic gloss, eliminating the "yoc" and a bit of the "a" parts of "yocan" (see Gloss, below). Oztoyocan is an inhabited place, a status established by the semantic indicator of a black-and-white drawing of a church structure. This church appears to the right of the simplex glyph and above the alphabetic gloss (see below and the historical contextualizing image). Barbara Mundy mentions an extancia called Otzoyuca that was a subordinate community to the cabecera of Epazoyuca (see the citation, below). The magueyes and a large rendition of a prickly pear cactus rising near the site not only serve as semantic indicators of the arid landscape and its flora, but most likely for the ubiquity of the agave plant in Zempoala, which is in turn related to a growing commercial pulque manufacture in the region (see Gerhard, Historical Geography of New Spain, 67-68). The simple black circles standing for oztotl on the map are a far cry from the elaborate representations of caves found in the Codex Mendoza (see below). The streamlined, simplified rendition of caves as black holes in the earth found on the map is probably a result of Spanish cultural influence that had been spreading into the Nahua world over the course of the sixteenth century. For more information about the Relación, see Mundy, Barbara E., “Mapping Babel: A Sixteenth-Century Indigenous Map from Mexico,” The Appendix, 1:4 (October 2013), Mundy (1996), 129, and Ballesteros García (2005), 63.