It is early winter, and I’m standing in the town square in San Jose del Cabo, in front of its striking cathedral that dates to the 1700s.

At the time Donald Trump had yet to make clear his plans to bully his neighbours, but as a Canadian in Mexico, there is a whiff of uncertainty in the air about what the lumbering elephant in between us might do. Our tour guide explains that the cathedral is one of many built by Jesuit missionaries in Baja California, the part of Mexico that sticks out like a finger into the Pacific Ocean on its west coast.