About IWGIAIndigenous peoples in Mexico
In January 2008, the Catalogue of Indigenous Languages of Mexico was officially published by the recently created National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI). The catelogue lists 368 variants of 68 indigenous languages, grouped into 11 linguistic families.
Although it is difficult to give an accurate estimate of the indigenous population of Mexico, the National Population Council (CONAPO) set the number living in the country at the time of the Population and Housing Census (2005) at 13,365,976, or 13% of the total population, spread across the 32 states of the country.
The country ratified ILO Convention 169 in 1990 and, in 1992, Mexico was recognised as a pluricultural nation when Article 6 of the Constitution was amended.
In 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional - EZLN) took up arms in response to the misery and exclusion being suffered by the indigenous peoples. The San Andrés Accords were signed in 1996 but it was not until 2001 that Congress approved the Law on Indigenous Rights and Culture and, even then, this did not reflect the territorial rights and political representation enshrined in the San Andrés Accords. More than 300 challenges to the law were rejected.
From 2003 onwards, the EZLN and the Indigenous National Congress (Congreso Nacional Indígena - CNI) began to implement the Accords in practice throughout their territories, creating autonomous indigenous governments in Chiapas, Michoacán and Oaxaca.
Although the states of Chihuahua, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo and San Luís Potosí have state constitutions with regard to indigenous peoples, indigenous legal systems are still not fully recognised.
Download the 2011 yearbook article on indigenous peoples in Mexico to read more about major developments and events during 2010
