Illustration inspired by real photographs of the church of "the virgen of the remedios” and behind it the Popocatepetl Volcano, both located in what is now called Cholula, Mexico. Underneath the church, the ruins of Templo Mayor, the main temple of the city of Tenochtitlan, and crucial to the Indigenous Cosmo vision, located in what is now called Mexico City.
Templo Mayor and the church of the “virgen of the remedios” are examples of one of the many ways in which spanish colonizers used architecture to erase, impose western ways of living, and assimilate Indigenous Peoples by modifying and reorganizing the landscape.
Sacred and/or religious Indigenous Buildings were partially destroyed to erect Catholic churches over the ruins afterwards; many times, the materials (like rocks) from the destroyed sites were reused to build the churches.