Todos Santos

The Guaycura, nomadic hunter-gatherers whose lands stretched as far as Loreto, lived here before the Spanish. In 1723 the Jesuit Jaime Bravo set up a visiting station called Todos Santos, dependent on the mission at La Paz, to supply it with water, fruit and vegetables. Ten years later Segismundo Taraval made it a mission in its own right, Santa Rosa de las Palmas. The Pericú rebellion of 1734 destroyed it and Taraval barely escaped to Isla Espíritu Santo; it was restored the following year. European diseases devastated the Indigenous population, and in the late 1740s the converts from La Paz were moved here and the mission took the name Nuestra Señora del Pilar.

On 30 March 1848 the Skirmish of Todos Santos, the last battle of the Mexican–American War, was fought near the town. After the missions were secularised, the springs and fertile land made Todos Santos the sugarcane capital of Baja, with eight sugar mills by the end of the 19th century; two theatres built in the boom years gave the town its first reputation for the arts.

The good times ended with the water. Only one mill was left when the spring dried up in 1950, and it closed in 1965. The town's prospects changed again when the spring came back to life in 1981 and the government paved Highway 19 in the mid-1980s, bringing tourists and reviving the farms. In 2006 Todos Santos was named a Pueblo Mágico by Mexico's tourism ministry.

Todos Santos is known above all for art. The tradition goes back to the sugar boom, when two theatres made the town a gathering place for artists. The town has produced painters, sculptors, craftspeople, poets and intellectuals, and about twenty galleries of art and sculpture now line its old streets, alongside shops of Mexican crafts. The town attracts artists and surfers, and has a busy calendar: a music festival that fills the town's bars and restaurants in January, an arts festival in February and a film festival in November that has run for more than twenty years and favours Mexican filmmakers.

The older calendar belongs to the church. The statue of the Virgin of El Pilar in the mission church is the focus of the town's main fiesta in November, a reminder that this is a Mexican farming and fishing town before it is a destination. Surfing is the other strand of local life: the heavy waves on the beaches around town draw surfers.

About 7,200 people lived in Todos Santos at the 2020 census, making it the second-largest town in the municipality of La Paz. Félix Agramont Cota, the first governor of Baja California Sur, is counted among its notable residents.

The town lives from farming — vegetables, chillies, avocados, papayas and mangoes grown around the oasis — as well as fishing, ranching and tourism, which grew after the highway was paved. Much of the day revolves around the plaza, the market gardens and the beaches.

Rapid growth has brought real strain. The town's only water source, its aquifer, is being over-pumped and invaded by salt water and by arundo, a non-native grass that soaks up groundwater, and the water system cannot always supply homes. The power line from La Paz runs over capacity, causing frequent blackouts. A residents' coalition, Protect Todos Santos, has taken legal action and organised against overdevelopment and a disputed urban development plan.

Todos Santos cooks from its oasis and the sea. The orchards around town grow mangoes, papayas and avocados, and the farms grow vegetables and chillies; mango and avocado growing took the place of the sugar industry when it faded. From the Pacific come fish and shellfish, served as tacos, ceviche and grilled plates in the town's restaurants and stands.

The ranch cooking of the southern peninsula is part of the table too: machaca, beef cooked, shredded and cooked again in its own juices, with fresh cheese and flour tortillas, and sweets of guava, mango and figs in syrup that are typical of the region around La Paz. Damiana, a wild herb of the south, flavours a traditional liqueur.

For a town of its size, Todos Santos has a striking range of restaurants, from Mexican kitchens and seafood places to Italian cooking and small cafés serving coffee and pastries, many of them in the old buildings of the historic centre.