E/CN.4/2004/80/Add.2 page 6 11. During the twentieth century the Mexican State based its indigenous policy on education, agrarian reform and the highways and communications infrastructure, with a view to “incorporating the Indians into the nation”. The indigenous communities that did not succumb completely to this acculturation process maintain their cultural identity as indigenous peoples conscious of what they are. The human rights situation of the indigenous peoples is part of this context. Although some progress has been made in this regard, there are seriously backward areas where sufficient political will has not been applied. The national debate on these problems acquired particular relevance with the armed uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in 1994, protesting against “500 years of oblivion”, the subsequent dialogue which led to the signing by the Government and EZLN of the San Andrés Agreements on indigenous identity and culture, and the constitutional reform of 2001 which has been strongly challenged (see below III.G). 12. The new article 2 of the Constitution (anticipated in a 1992 reform) states that the Mexican Nation is single, indivisible and multicultural and based originally on its indigenous peoples; the communities composing an indigenous people are those forming a social, economic and cultural unit, established on a territory and acknowledging their own authorities in accordance with their customs and practices. The right of indigenous peoples to self-determination is to be exercised in a constitutional framework of independence ensured by national unity. Indigenous peoples and communities are to be recognized in the constitutions and laws of the federal States … which are to establish the characteristics of self-determination and autonomy that best express the situations and aspirations of the indigenous peoples of each State; however, legislation on indigenous matters has only been promulgated in some States (Chihuahua, Nayarit, Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí), for the most part prior to the reform of the Constitution. 13. Having completed its historical mandate, the National Institute for Indigenous Affairs, established in 1948 to implement indigenous policy, became the National Commission for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples (CDI) in 2003, with the goal of directing, coordinating, promoting, supporting, encouraging, providing follow-up and evaluating programmes, projects, strategies and public action for the integrated and sustainable development of indigenous peoples and communities, of being a consultative body and of assisting in the exercise of the self-determination and autonomy of the indigenous peoples and communities. In 2003, Congress adopted the General Act on the Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the National Institute of Indigenous Languages was established. Mexico has signed the main international human rights instruments, and in 1990 ratified the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169. 14. Most of the indigenous population lives in the poorest municipalities and States, with the lowest indices of human and social development, where subsistence farming is commonplace in a rough and difficult environment and the land does not provide enough to feed the family, increasingly forcing people to move away, even abroad, to meet their needs. The great majority of indigenous people in these regions are smallholders and day labourers. In 2002 Mexico occupied the fifty-fourth position out of 173 countries with a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.796. The three southern States with the largest indigenous populations (Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca) have the lowest HDI (literacy rate, life expectancy at birth index and GDP) in Mexico.