E/CN.4/2004/80/Add.2 page 5 Procurator; Ms. Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, Director of the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples; Mr. Luis H. Álvarez, Coordinator for Dialogue and Peace in Chiapas; Ms. Mariclaire Acosta, Under-Secretary for Human Rights and Democracy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Mr. Herbert Taylor, General Coordinator of the Puebla Panamá Plan; and deputies and senators on the Commissions on Indigenous Affairs and the Peace and Concord Commission (COCOPA) of the Mexican Congress. 7. In his visit to the various States, the Special Rapporteur held meetings, inter alia, with Tarahumara authorities in Chihuahua; Yaqui, Mayo, Seri, O’odham, O’otham, Kikapú and Cucapá leaders in Sonora; Nahua and Wixarika leaders in Jalisco; organizations and representatives of the Zapotec, Mixtec and Mixe communities in Oaxaca and the indigenous leaders and human rights defenders in the Tehuantepec Isthmus. In Chiapas, after interviews with the State, military and religious authorities, he held meetings with representatives of human rights organizations, associations of indigenous women and leaders of various communities. He also visited the communities of Masohá Chuc’ha, municipality of Tila in the north, Nahá in the Lacandona forests and Nuevo San Gregorio in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. In Tlapa, Guerrero, he met representatives of the indigenous Amuzgos, Mixtecos, Nahuas, Tlapanecos and mestizos. He also found out about the situation of the original and immigrant indigenous communities of the Federal District. 8. The Special Rapporteur had a meeting with the President of the National Human Rights Commission, Dr. José Luis Soberanes, and with the presidents of the State Commissions. He also held consultations with the representatives of the United Nations agencies in Mexico, with representatives of non-governmental organizations and members of academic institutions. II. GENERAL BACKGROUND AND CONSTITUTIONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE MULTICULTURAL NATURE OF MEXICO 9. A century ago, the indigenous communities that made up the majority of the population in Mexico, hard hit by the loss of their communal lands and by the poverty, exploitation and oppression under which they lived, were one of the key social forces which were to precipitate Mexico’s agrarian revolution in 1910. The 1917 Constitution initiated a process of agrarian reform which in the course of time benefited some 3 million peasants, for the most part indigenous, grouped under various landholding arrangements in agrarian communities, ejidos (units of communal land) and small properties. The agrarian reform, however, soon lost impetus, and numbers of landless farmers and migrant day labourers increased again, their situation aggravated by population pressure on limited natural resources. 10. The 70 years of political control exercised by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) up to the election of President Vicente Fox Quezada in 2000, brought the institution of strong oligarchies, often accused of municipal and State nepotism and corruption. Agribusiness interests, together with the growing concentration of land in the hands of big business, put pressure on the communities which were increasingly unable to survive on the produce of their land. In 1992 the Constitution was reformed, opening the way to the privatization of indigenous communal lands as part of a globalization-encapsulating economic development process, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has brought great changes to the rural world in which most indigenous people live.