Merchants annoyed by the return of trees in San Miguel de Allende

Published January 13th, 2021

After removing the trees, now the local government will put new ones on Guadalupe Avenue. There are already perforations where this fauna will be installed, but such action already annoyed merchants, who point out that this will reduce parking spaces for customers.

In October 2019, the administration of Luis Alberto Villarreal transplanted the trees on Guadalupe Avenue to give priority to the work of the arches that today adorn the market. This action was not without controversy, as environmental groups defended the trees and even stood guard 24 hours a day to prevent their removal.

In the end, all the trees were removed and the work was done. With the entry of the government headed by Mauricio Trejo, the trees are now back, an action that has also caused controversy. The mayor himself assures that his actions are not political revenge.

“It is not an act of revenge, it is an act of justice with the activists who defended the trees and with all the people of San Miguel,” he said.

Trejo Pureco’s government has been criticized for only focusing its efforts on undoing everything Luis Alberto Villarreal did and not on innovative actions that help the city’s development.

A market merchant, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that with the placement of the trees between 6 and 8 spaces where his customers could park will disappear:

“To my knowledge, no one has asked the current administration to place trees there, they already harmed us enough with the work of the arcade and now comes another occurrence of our rulers that, instead of helping us in this area quite conflicted by traffic, now they bring the trees removed by the past administration, that issue was already and hopefully the current government will act responsibly with new ideas and not with revanchisms with its predecessor. Maybe the mayor is thinking of affecting the image of the arcade by putting trees over the arches, but in reality this affects us as sanmiguelenses and merchants”, he pointed out to remind the president that right where he is putting his pile of trees it floods.

Faced with criticism, municipal president Mauricio Trejo spoke in a video (no longer selfie format) to present a video from 2019 when activists defended the trees and says: “never again will the police be used to reprimand or beat Sanmiguelenses or activists who are depending on the flora or fauna of our municipality. The trees are coming back to Guadalupe Avenue; Guadalupe Avenue will be green again”.