PLace-names in mexico-TenochTiTLan • 165the manuscript pictured in conversation, but here Guzmán
sits in the tepotzoicpalli, the high-backed seat made of
woven reeds used by indigenous political authorities, and
his long tilmatli obscures most of his Spanish-style cloth-
ing beneath, while the viceroy sits at a slightly lower level
in the curule chair. Below them, breaking the symmetry of
the page, is the complaint, written in Nahuatl: the ten male
servants and ten female cooks for the indigenous cabildo
have not been showing up for work. They are pictured as
an indigenous man holding a broom and a woman kneeling
at a metate, a stone used to grind prepared maize into the
dough for tortillas. These figures have resonance beyond
the obvious: the creation of maize dough was the female
employ par excellence, such an essential activity for the sus-
tenance of life that a Nahua creation myth told of the dei-
ties creating the human race from similar dough. Sweeping,
likewise, was a world-ordering activity, and daily sweeping
of spaces was necessary to remove any disordering filth, or
tlazolli, that might have collected during the night. 65 The
practice of vigorously sweeping church courtyards was
singled out for admiration by the chronicler Mendieta,
who, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, praised
the practice as a sign of reverence for the sacred space of
churches: “The old people value sweeping the churches,
no matter how high-ranking they may be, following the
custom of their ancestors in pagan times, who in sweeping
showed their devotion, especially at a time they lacked the
ability to join in warfare and battle.” 66 Thus, these are not
merely servants, but emblems of the near-sacred activities
that keep the world in order, and they are aligned with the
figure of Guzmán above. 67
Unlike the Mendoza image of the palace of Moteuc-
zoma, the tecpan is a vacant space in the center of the page
in the image in figure 5.5, labeled “tecpan calli mexico”—
that is, “palace house of Mexico.” It is significant, given
the slippage of names discussed above, that this seat of
government does not have the modifying (and limiting)
word “ Tenochtitlan” included, even though the symbols
of the patron saints of the four parcialidades that appear
above clearly refer to the four parts of Tenochtitlan and
do not include Tlatelolco. The puzzling emptiness of the
tecpan can be read two ways: Guzmán was never seated as
gobernador, nor was he a member of the Mexica ruling elite,
and the artist may have seen him as someone who was “out-
side” the ruling circle. But the emptiness of the building can
also be seen as visually establishing that the tecpan was a
building belonging to the office of the governor, rather than
to any ruling family; recall the lawsuit of 1576, discussed
in chapter 5, where a building that residents of San Juan
Moyotlan had built was usurped by the Tapia family. 68 As
part of bringing urban focus to the tecpan, Guzmán seems
to have enlarged the building during his term in office. 69
We have encountered the four Christian symbols for
the four parts of the city, San Juan Moyotlan, San Pablo
Teopan, San Sebastián Atzacoalco, and Santa María Cue-
popan, in the Genaro García 30, where they are visually
allied with tribute collection. Here in this Codex Osuna
image, however, the same symbols are attached to tiny
heads, exactly the same kind of anonymous faces that
are used to designate peasant landholders in maps of the
period. For instance, on the Beinecke Map, the fields that
dominate the right side of the map each contain heads to
designate the smallholder, and each is distinguished by a
name written in iconic script to the right (figure 7.16). The
same is to be seen in censuses of the period. But in the
Osuna, the “commoner” head is identified with the Chris-
tian symbol of the parcialidad, a change from the Genaro
García 30, where it is the names of the tlaxilacalli that rep-
resent the popular classes. If we were to read the space that
is created on the page of the Codex Osuna as hierarchical
layered space, at the bottom we would have the commoners
and their essential labors; above them would be an equal
partnership of indigenous and royal governance; above
them would be the tecpan, symbol of indigenous political
order; and above that, on the highest plane, would float the
emblems of commoners and their Christian city, arranged
in cartographic order. 70 A corresponding “map” of the city’s
sacred space is to be found on folio 8v, introduced in chap-
ter 6, where we find five elements arranged in a quincunx, a
typical arrangement of sacred spaces (see figure 6.5). Here,
the city’s only indigenous parish, San José de los Natura-
les, is the central pivot, with Pedro de Gante below it, and
below him, the symbol of Tenochtitlan’s name, represented
as a nochtli cactus growing out of a stone. Around it are
arranged the chapels representing the four parcialidades,
to create a kind of shorthand map, with east, the sunrise
direction, at the top.
So in the images of this section of the Codex Osuna
we see an emergent image of the city with common-
ers organized into this four-part Christian republic. As
juez-gobernador, Guzmán receives his authority from the
king via the viceroy. At the same time, we can see further
evidence of the widening crack in the social compact that
we saw running through the pages of Genaro García 30;