According to the 2000 Census (Censo General de Población y vivienda 2000), there are 6,044,547 speakers of indigenous languages, 7.13% of the total population of Mexico 5 years and older [ INEGI 2001 ] 1 . Indigenous people of Mexico, like those of other Latin American countries, have occupied the lowest position in society after the Spanish conquest. The post-revolution governments allocated part of their budgets to the socalled ‘indigenous policies (políticas indigenistas)’ that they claimed were designed to improve the living standard of indigenous people with due attention paid to their particularities 2 . Still today, the poverty of indigenous people is striking, in its width as well as depth. The World Bank organized and published a study about poverty of indigenous people in four Latin American countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia), which made it clear that indigenous people suffer economic poverty, -measured by an absolute shortage of income-, much more than non-indigenous people [ Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 1995 ]. With respect to other elements that are indispensable for decent human lives, indigenous people in Mexico are considerably deprived [ CONAPO 1994 : Capítulo 3 ; INI 2000 ; Valdés 1995 : 50-53 ]. Parallel with the urgency of indigenous poverty's reduction, increasing number of people are becoming interested in the realization of indigenous autonomy, as an alternative to the alien (occidental) and exclusive development model imposed upon them by government and dominant sectors. It is in this context, i.e. recognition of indigenous people’s plight and/or awakening to their rights, that we see proliferating social policies directed towards indigenous people. These social policies are a set of projects carried out by non-indigenous actors, which include not only the government but also Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), for tackling at least one of the multi-dimensional problems (deprivations) of Mexican indigenous people