Centro Histórico de San José del Cabo

The Centro Histórico of San José del Cabo is the handful of blocks around Plaza Mijares where the Jesuit mission that founded the town once stood, close to the sea and the San José estuary. In June 2024, at the Tianguis Internacional de Pueblos Mágicos in San Antonio, Texas, Mexico's Tourism Secretariat named it one of the country's twelve new Barrios Mágicos, the first in Baja California Sur.

Long before the mission, sailors on the Manila galleon knew the spot as a reliable watering place: the Río San José, which runs mostly underground from the Sierra de la Laguna, gave fresh water to ships arriving from Asia. The Jesuit Nicolás Tamaral and the visiting father José Echeverría founded the mission of San José del Cabo Añuití on 8 April 1730, first beside the beach and later inland, where Tamaral built the church and where he was killed in 1734 during the Pericú rebellion. A flood brought the church down in 1793; it was rebuilt in 1799, battered again when the town drove off the insurgent ship Independencia in 1822, and the mission was abandoned in 1840. The twin-towered church that closes the plaza today dates from 1940, and its façade carries a tile mural of Tamaral's martyrdom.

The plaza and the main boulevard are named for Lieutenant José Antonio Mijares, killed in November 1847 leading the assault on the American garrison barricaded in the priest's house, the site now taken by the Casa de la Cultura, a 19th-century building with arches and wooden ceilings on Calle Álvaro Obregón. That street and those around it make up the gallery district: on Thursdays from November to June the Art Walk keeps the galleries open into the evening, with artists, music and food stalls, and local producers set up a craft market on the plaza. The feast of Saint Joseph runs from 16 to 22 March, peaking on the 19th.