Tzacuallan (CmpRG)

Tzacuallan was one of the four cabeceras making up the municipality of Cempohuallan. Together, the two figures expressing its name appear to represent the site of a pre-1519 temple with a ceremonial platform at its base. Why the artist who painted these elements chose to represent tzacualli in this way is not known, but the pairing not only emphasizes the meaning of the glyphs, but also suggests that this was a significant site prior to the arrival of the Spanish colonizers on the scene. While the two glyphs are not associated directly with a church, which is the usual way an inhabited place is flagged on the map, they are placed very near to the large representation of the region’s major marketplace (tianquiztli), and not too far from a large drawing of the Franciscan monastery church. The seated figure of the cabecera’s gobernador (chief municipal officer) of 1580, don Francisco de Guzmán, is also nearby (see the historical contextualizing image). Another type of ritual platform, a teapetlatl, appears elsewhere on the map (see below). For more information about the RG 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), Mundy (1996), and Ballesteros García (2005), 54, figure 9, who, however, does not account for the two separate elements in the name.