E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.2 page 15 believes that the correspondence between areas of poverty and social marginalization and the geographical distribution of indigenous people or people of African origin shows the depth of systemic, structural discrimination in Guatemala. 40. Representatives of the Garifuna claim that, despite the fact that they first landed on the shores of what is now Guatemala in 1806 and despite the fact that they are mentioned in the Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Garifuna are not fully recognized as Guatemalans and are discriminated against when they emigrate from the Izabal region (Livingston) to the capital. Many of them have been harassed by the police, who consider them as illegal foreign immigrants in Guatemala. In schools in the department of Izabal, Garifuna children feel discriminated against because their language is not used and they feel they are not receiving the same attention from teachers as Ladino children. Moreover, the absence of their culture, history and traditions from school courses makes these children feel marginalized. The lack of opportunities, which is related to the lack of development projects in their region18 and to the discrimination against them, has forced many of them to emigrate, particularly to the United States of America, from where they support the families they left behind. They are afraid that their community might lose its language because there is no bilingual education for their children. In light of the interest shown by tourists in their region, some of them say they are afraid they may be forced out of Livingston in the same way as they were forced off the island of Saint Vincent in 1796. 41. During a visit to a Garifuna couple living with HIV/AIDS, the Special Rapporteur was able to gauge the effects of the lack of adequate health facilities in the town of Livingston, in the department of Izabal. The health centre in the town has neither the appropriate drugs nor sufficient equipment to treat, for example, HIV-positive persons and AIDS patients, who are obliged to go to Puerto Barrios, which is about an hour away by boat. The trip requires financial resources that these individuals do not always have. In Livingston, many sick people die for lack of adequate medical care. The lack of health care shows a lack of commitment on the part of the Government towards the population groups that suffer most from discrimination. For this reason, Guatemala has been denounced to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by HIV/AIDS patients who have no access to treatment. 42. Representatives of the Xinca people also stressed the specific forms of discrimination from which they suffer, which are related to the pressure exerted on them since colonial times not to speak their language and to abandon their traditional costumes, as well as the breakdown of their communities. They pointed out that the State dealt ruthlessly with Xinca efforts to organize, rejected their customary law and expropriated their communities’ land for the benefit of big landowners, leaving the Xinca to be exploited as farm workers on coffee plantations. Like other indigenous peoples, the Xinca were the victims of military repression during the armed conflict and were marginalized economically and socially. Although its members are still treated as if they were invisible, the Xinca people is starting to rebuild itself, with the aim of recovering its cultural identity as a distinct people among the other indigenous peoples. For example, Xinca organizations have begun to carry out in-depth sociocultural and anthropological research into their people’s practices and customs. Their representatives claim that the situation of their communities in the villages of Yupiltepeque, Jumaytepeque and Guazacapán requires urgent attention, as they have been threatened with the expropriation of their land by the municipal authorities.