hall), and not to continue with the individual delivery of land, it had authorized a series of works in preparation for the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons, it had issued the necessary legislative measures to begin construction of the National Highway 86; and it had begun paving a road in the territory covered by the claim. The petitioners also indicated that the government of the Province had engaged in individual conversations with certain caciques of the communities that make up the Lhaka Honhat Association, urging them to sign memorandums of understanding for the delivery of individual properties. 43. The petitioners again informed the IACHR of the events that were undermining the understanding between the parties in the friendly settlement procedure, and that implied in their view a breach of the commitments made during the negotiations. Among those events, the petitioners indicated that the caciques of each community had received a note from the representative of the Provincial Institute of Indigenous Affairs of Salta urging the communities to obtain legal status from the Province of Salta as a prerequisite for electing representatives to that Institute, and to do so by a deadline later in the same month of June. According to the petitioners, this approach was intended to break up the Lhaka Honhat Association into various legally recognized organizations. The petitioners argue that the government of Salta had been systematically engaging in maneuvers to deny the legitimacy of the Association as representative of its member communities, as had been repeatedly demonstrated and confirmed by each of the community caciques. Moreover, the petitioners claim that provincial government engineers were continuing to take measurements for the delivery of properties, and had in fact prepared a concrete proposal to deliver 15,000 properties to the La Puntana community. 44. On July 13, 2005, the petitioners submitted a request for precautionary measures to the IACHR upon learning, via a newspaper report in the daily El Tribuno of June 13, 2005, that the draft law on the referendum on fiscal lots 55 and 14 had been submitted on June 6 to the provincial Chamber of Deputies, signed by the Governor. The petitioners maintain that the provincial legislature's approval of a referendum on the delivery "of the lands corresponding to fiscal lots 55 and 14 to their current occupants, both aboriginals and criollos, executing the necessary infrastructure works", constitutes a breakdown of the friendly settlement process. The petitioners also claim that the situation at that time revealed "serious intrusions in the zone: offers of applications for land, the marking off and measuring of lots, illegal wood cutting and construction of infrastructure works, on one hand, as well as