DEMOGRAPHY OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

1. Starting with the first national census in 1885, the indigenous population was classified by a linguistic criterion. This indicator was misleading since many of the indigenous people refused to acknowledge their use of indigenous languages for fear of discrimination. The 1921 census included more direct questions as to racial origin and the results showed that 59 percent of the population (or a total of 8,504,561) considered themselves to be mixed mestizo while 29 percent (4,179,449) of the total national population self-described themselves as being indigenous. A further 10 percent were self-classified as “white” and 2 percent as foreigners.

Table 5.1. Indigenous Population in the Census from 1930 to1990

2. The differences in the figures throughout the census periods show the permanent under-enumeration of the indigenous population throughout this sixty-year period. This fact has serious negative repercussions in the quality of services implemented in the indigenous regions. It is very common to find that the demographic information on indigenous populations does not coincide with that of various studies and diagnostics conducted for various ethnic groups.

3. Examples that clearly illustrate the diverse criteria, which have been used in the censuses to classify the indigenous population, are the states of Morelos and Tlaxcala. Both states were, in 1930, states where ten percent of the population was indigenous language speakers. In 1990 these states registered, four percent and 5.8 percent respectively of the population as indigenous language speakers. This discrepancy was due to the fact that the census takes language as the only parameter to classify indigenous peoples. The diminution in numbers is due to the implementation of new policies, both educational and cultural, over the span of sixty years which has contributed to the loss of indigenous language, but this is not the same as stating that this population suffered a parallel loss of cultural identity.

4. The 1995 Population and Housing Census registered nine percent of the total population (6.7 million people) as indigenous language speakers, but included an additional variable: “person living in a household where the head of household is an indigenous language speaker.” This resulted in an increase to 8.9 million. For its part, the National Indigenist Institute, whose mandate is to implement the Government�s policies towards indigenous people, estimated in 1995 about 10 million indigenous people. Other sources, using a natural growth rate of 2.7 percent calculated that by 1997 there would be 10.5 million indigenous people (see Table 5.2).

5. The lack of clarity in the censuses concerning the self-defined indigenous population makes the determination of their actual numbers difficult. For example, the indigenous population was calculated to have had a growth rate of 5.2 percent in the decade between 1970 to 1980, compared to a 3.3 percent national average growth rate. In 1990 this growth rate declined to levels below one percent. Demographers interested in the indigenous population, in an effort to reduce the discrepancies and distortions in the censuses, took a twenty-year period to measure the demographic growth rate of this population. Between 1970 and 1990 the studies showed a growth rate of 2.7 percent � slightly superior to the national growth rate of 2 percent (see Table 5.4).

6. The decline in the indigenous population growth rate is partly linked to behavioral changes induced in the indigenous population over the last 20 years by government programs. The changes, however, are not homogeneous: there are some groups with a high growth rate and others that appear to be stagnant or declining. Regardless of the true rate of growth (which is difficult to determine), the inconsistencies in the censuses obfuscate demographically significant trends with the result that the censuses have not contributed positively to formulating adequate and appropriate policies for education, health, or project implementation in indigenous regions. In the State of Campeche for instance, with an indigenous population of 89,000, the educational needs are theoretically covered from elementary through secondary and technical school levels, but the high rates of absenteeism, low productivity, and school drop-out rate amount to one fifth of the school attending population. The main reasons for this are diverse: (a) the teachers who provide bilingual education are not capable of developing and delivering a curriculum in an indigenous language except at a basic level; and (b) the children and adolescents must assist the parents in the agricultural and commercial cycles which results in an inability to continue in school.

The solution to improve the conditions and quality of life of the indigenous population lies not in isolated measures, such as special education programs for indigenous regions, without at the same time attending to the teacher training needs. The government programs ought to be integrated accepting the range of cultural differences that structure the response of the indigenous population to the state�s policies.

The censuses show that the indigenous population has declined in relation to past growth in the last few decades, yet art the same time there has been an increase in absolute numbers that reached 5 million in 1980 and 8.9 million in 1990.

7. The demographic increase of recent years is partly due to the growing social awareness about ethnicity and of self-identification as a member of an indigenous group. Slowly this has resulted in some targeted efforts to improve specific social conditions among some groups. These include the development of preventive medicine in the rural areas, and especially to vaccination campaigns and the eradication of endemic diseases, such as tuberculosis. Nonetheless, as the diagnostics for the states show, there is much to be done because of the low ratio of doctors to patients and the lack of medicine. In large part, the lack of health services is due to the lack of communication between doctors and patients and conflicting concepts of health and disease causality. The indigenous population has various forms of dealing with diseases and curative methods that are often antithetical to western medicine. Recently the INI has launched a new effort, jointly with the Health Department, to train midwives in indigenous communities in order to combine their experience with new modern treatment methods.

The growth of the indigenous population is definitive. Their present and future presence in the future of the country is incontrovertible.

8. Given that the statistical information on the indigenous population has been based on subjective indicators rather than on culturally determined processes of classification, the true demographic tendency of the indigenous population is had to determine. However, it is apparent that the increase registered recently after some two decades of apparent decline is an illustration not only of the demographic vitality but also of the influence of a new generation of indigenous intellectuals in the country. They have been responsible for the resurgence of movements that tend to the formation and consolidation of ethnic identities in the country. This is a process that is emergent and transforming, and is linked to other social and political movements whose final results are difficult to predict.