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The video of this week’s recommendations is here.

This week’s recommendations include four sculptures along the main tourist street of San Miguel de Cozumel, which runs along the west coast of the island. The figures represent a historical sequence that runs from north to south.

1. Ixchel. First up: Ixchel, a goddess of the Maya associated with the moon and fertility, among other things. (Supernatural beings don’t often translate easily from one civilization to another.)

2. Mayan Ruin Monument. Next: a reconstruction of a Mayan pyramid. Mayan mothers and daughters once made pilgrimages to Cozumel. The island was so flat that a fire had to be kept burning in the original pyramid, so that boats from the mainland (Yucatan) could find it.

But this monument represents a later time. At the foot of the steps, the mother and daughter bring traditional offerings.

At the top of the steps are not one but two religious figures: one Mayan, one a Catholic priest.

The Spaniards led by Juan de Grijalva landed on Cozumel in 1518. Hernan Cortes, arriving a year later, replaced Mayan religious images with sculptures of the Virgin Mary. Very little that’s original Mayan remains on Cozumel, except a few ruins near the center of the island. You have to wonder how life on Cozumel would have been different if the residents hadn’t been forcibly shifted from one religion to another. But if you wonder that, then you have to wonder what would have happened if the residents of the Iberian Peninsula hadn’t chosen religion as their way to unify against the Moors, or what would have happened if the Romans hadn’t taken over the Peninsula from the Celtiberians … I wonder if anyone has written an alternative history where some of that happens?

3. Monument to Carnaval (2008). Skipping a good many centuries: a monument to Carnaval, which one tends to forget is nominally a religious festival. This is not a great sculpture, but it pleases me that Cozumel celebrates the things that make it a tourist attraction.

4. Ponzanelli, R.M.. Monument to the Diver. And finally: a monument to scuba diving, Cozumel’s year-round attraction. If you don’t visit Cozumel on a cruise boat, chances are good that you visit it for scuba diving or snorkeling. Its reefs are home to a remarkable variety of aquatic life, much of which is realistically depicted on this huge bronze sculpture. On opposite sides of the arch are a man and a woman in scuba gear. The fountains run at erratic intervals, probably because water is good for scuba but not so much for bronze.

Jacques Cousteau’s 1955 film Le Monde du Silence won a Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Documentary. It inspired the filming in Cozumel of the 1956 movie Un Mundo Nuevo by Lamar Boden, who later filmed Flipper and Sea Hunt. The 1958 version in English, The New World, helped put Cozumel on the map as a tourist destination. It makes sense that the island would raise a monument to scuba diving!