Within the last 20 years there has been an overt change in the policies of governments of Mesoamerican countries towards the indigenous languages. There has been official recognition of their right to existence and some kind of governmental support, to the point of recognizing them as national languages. Bilingual (rather than monolingual Spanish) education has been recognized as desirable even if not always actually achieved in practice. In Guatemala the recognition of the indigenous languages as official languages and a valuable part of the country's identity came after the Civil War which ended in 1996. In Mexico shifting governments had talked about the value of the country's indigenous heritage but it was not until 2003 that the "Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas" established a framework for the conservation, nurturing and development of indigenous languages.