The wound is open and visible to all. A new scar has been left on the hills that frame the state capital. This time, the damage is located on Sirena Hill, between Meco Hill and the Piletas River, where heavy machinery shamelessly invaded a high area, removing earth as if the natural landscape were a mere obstacle on the path to concrete and urbanization.
The trace is clear: a path has begun to open where it shouldn’t. There is no environmental logic or social need to justify this earth removal, except for the increasingly evident possibility of an attempt to pave a road that would serve as a prelude to future construction. A road that, if not stopped in time, could become another path toward irreversible deterioration of the natural environment.
This “scratch” is not an isolated incident. This is just the latest chapter in a series of environmental attacks that have been accumulating in the hills of Guanajuato, under the lukewarm, or perhaps complicit, gaze of municipal authorities. The institutional silence in the face of these acts is, at the very least, alarming. At most, deeply concerning.
As the machinery advances inland, the area’s flora and fauna retreat without defense. Native species flee, the land fractures, and ecosystems are irremediably fragmented. What is lost is not just greenery: history, identity, and future are lost.
And in the midst of all this, the municipality still lacks a legal and environmental compass. The Municipal Program for Urban Development and Ecological Territorial Planning—a basic instrument for controlling the city’s growth—has not been updated for more than 10 years. Although the City Council approved its referral to the Guanajuato State Planning Institute (Iplaneg) in March, nothing has been heard since then. No progress, no setbacks. Only silence.
This regulatory vacuum has been exploited, according to suspicions by citizens and specialists, by developers who see a business opportunity in the lack of regulation. The result? An accelerated advance of private construction in areas where only vegetation and wildlife once existed.
In Guanajuato City, the hills are no longer a refuge for the forgotten. The highlands, which once housed humble homes for those who had no choice but to build on the slopes, are now transformed into coveted spaces for luxury subdivisions. A phenomenon that not only increases the cost of land but also marginalizes those who previously lived there.
The question is not new, but it remains relevant: who authorizes these projects? Who allows the passage of heavy machinery through ecological zones? Who benefits from this new urban face? And above all: who protects Guanajuato from those who only see its hills as a business opportunity?
Speeches and good intentions are not enough. Firm action, real inspections, and exemplary sanctions are required. Guanajuato doesn’t need more promises: it needs defenders of its territory.
For now, the “scratch” remains. A silent witness to a growth model that seems unstoppable. One more wound on the body of a city that, if not defended soon, could wake up one day without recognizing its own face in the mirror of its hills.
Source: tvguanajuato
