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Theyrohlem iftheyeruvlan rneqfyerson ALBERTO PALIZA FARFAN am assembling here condensations of a number of my thoughts already presented more elaborately in various Peruvian journals and books, concerning the long and ongoing history of the use, neglect, and abuse of the Sign Language of Peru (LSP). Since the advent of my incurable deafness, at the age of twelve, my mind and my life have become closely bound to my deaf friends, my wife (deaf since birth), and the entire Peruvian deaf community. All of my work has been developed in response to what I have perceived as an urgent mandate from the deaf community in Peru. This community's heritage has been transmitted from generation to generation of deaf people through LSP. Centuries of hearing people's discussions about the problems of Peruvian deaf people-filled with evasive talk about administrative, legal, or religious mechanisms for maintaining government- or church-centered guardianship over this "disabled group"have hidden or distorted the true source of the problems. All of this talk has been fruitless. It apparently remains for a critic from the deaf community to uncover the real problems, which can clearly be seen in many aspects of Peru's history. The current problems of Peruvian deaf people are rooted in stereotypes dating back as far as the 1500s. Ordinances in the colonial era, from 1544 to 1815, when Peru was subject to Spanish rule, all describe "deaf mute" individuals as among "the disabled" and give no indication of any substantive recognition of the value of sign language. In the Republican era, from 1825 to the present, deaf people have at least benefited from the dissolution of Spanish rule to the extent that the right to self-expression in sign language has had a slightly better chance to become recognized. Nevertheless, one can find in articles of civil code from earlier in this period such statements as: "Deaf mutes are unfit to marry." Similarly, Peru's Supreme Health Decrees still state that "The deaf are forbidden to drive automobiles." We of the Peruvian deaf community maintain that any attempt to resolve Peruvian deaf people's problems with administrative measures, with theoretical proposals, with teaching methods created by hearing people-all with the ostensible goal of assimilating deaf people into hearing society-constitutes a superficial endeavor designed to ensure that the supremacy of hearing people over deaf people will persist. Unfortunately, we deaf people currently find ourselves in the situation of being compelled by laws and ordinances into an essentially powerless integration-largely against our will-into an exclusively hearing environment. The specialist, the otorhinologist, the sociologist, the lawyer-all end up conspiring to become our "hearing administrators," inflicting their decisions paternalistically upon deaf people, whether or not we want their help. The Problem of the Peruvian Deaf Person Hearing administrators have for centuries based all their actions on the theoretical premise that deaf people are inferior. The result has been either that deaf people were warehoused on a mere subsistence level with the mentally retarded in specialized centers throughout the republic or at other times they were mixed in with the hearing from an early age-without proper support in schools, sanatariums, and religious cloisters . What successes deaf Peruvians have accomplished, they have managed in spite of, rather than because of, the institutions created for them by hearing administrators. Increasing numbers of deaf people in recent times have managed-through their own determination and mutual support-to assimilate admirably into the culture and technology of the hearing society. This group's dynamic and creative efforts, in fact, have contributed to the consciousness of deaf people's real problems, which turn out not at all to be what hearing administrators have implied they were. It is increasingly clear that the centuries-old denigration of the Peruvian deaf person has been little more than a cheap invention of petty lawyers codifying the superior attitudes of hearing administrative boards. Appealing to lofty moral judgments based on an old repertoire of nationalist ideas, these hearing administrators have persisted in viewing deaf people as failing to meet the high standards of Peruvian hearing civilization . From this perspective, the deaf community is seen as a laggard ethnic group, its children badly in need of constant training in integration and socialization skills. Those of us who have come to see these standards for what they are must seek international support from human rights organizations in the United States and Europe that denounce such oppressive views. The deaf community of...

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