Approximately 40 million people living in five Latin American countries--Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru--retain the language and much of the culture of the ancient pre-Columbian civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas. These indigenous people tend to be poor, rural residents with little education. Long an underserved population from a health care perspective, the indigenous population has also proved difficult to reach with family planning services. An examination of two promising projects--one in Guatemala and one in Bolivia--suggests several potentially useful strategies for reaching indigenous people, among them the use of community workers and traditional health practitioners to promote family planning, the provision of a mix of maternal and child health services along with family planning and the employment of bilingual and bicultural staff members.