"Black Mexican activists estimate the population of Afro-Mexicans at about 1 million, but there are no official figures," Alexis Okeowo writes in Time Magazine. "Earlier this year, they petitioned the National Institute of Statistics and Geography to include the Afro-Mexican population as a separate category in the next census, in 2010. Official statistics do not recognize blacks as a separate ethnic group (56 indigenous groups are officially accredited, the largest ones being the Nahuatl and the Maya, numbering more than 2 million each). As a result, Afro-Mexicans say they have been left out of institutional programs and are without a cultural identity. The group Mexico Negro A.C. is linking with similar Afro-descendant organizations in Latin America that have achieved success in securing better treatment. 'We no longer want to be detained by security agents in our own country who say that in Mexico there are no blacks,' says Rodolfo Prudente Dominguez, an activist with Mexico Negro."