Central America: Deaf Community

Language Communities

In Mexico and Central America, only the governments of El Salvador, Mexico, and Panama formally recognize national sign languages. In Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, the governments do not formally recognize sign language. The countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama, however, all have dictionaries of their national sign languages. Therefore, although there are some linguistic commonalities among Deaf communities in Mexico and Central America, they all tend to be small. Moreover, given the differences in language and resources, some Central American Deaf communities are relatively more isolated than others, numbering fewer than 500 members.

In some Central American countries such as Guatemala, for example, rural communities can be extremely isolated geographically and culturally and have little access to health services and specialized resources, such as education for deaf people. Although there is commonality of sign languages in Spanish-speaking regions of Central America, there are national and ethnic variations. Generally, sign language of that region shares some elements with American Sign Language (ASL).

Some variations of sign language in this region are Mexican Sign Language (or LSM, according to its initials [Page 107]in Spanish) and Nicaraguan Sign Language (LSN, according to its initials in Spanish). Most Deaf people in Mexico use LSM. Another Mexican variation is known as Yucatan Maya Sign Language. There have been reports of villages numbering close to 500 in Yucatan, of which about 15 are fluent users of Yucatan Sign Language. The language was used mostly among Deaf people and members of their families, as well as among other members of the community who were familiar with the language to different degrees. The users are mostly of Mayan origin. Ethnologists have found that knowledge of Yucatan Sign Language helps local Deaf people become more integrated into the community and that Yucatan Sign Language shows all the structural elements that qualify it as a sign language.

Nicaraguan Sign Language was developed spontaneously in the 1970s by deaf children in Nicaraguan schools. The phenomenon of Nicaraguan Sign Language falls within the sphere known as Deaf community sign languages, which occur when Deaf people create a language in their community. A community can include a school or a whole village, and the new language is not generally known by most of the local hearing population in the village.

Similar to Mexican Sign Language, Guatemalan Sign Language is distinct and culturally bound, as well as Spanish based. This reflects the national linguistic culture, in which Spanish is the most used language but, another 22 indigenous languages are formally accepted as part of the multicultural and plural society. Besides Guatemalan Sign Language, which is used mostly by the majority Spanish-speaking Deaf population, Guatemala also includes a Mayan K’iche Sign Language known also as Meemul Tziij. Some experts believe that this sign language of Guatemalan highland Mayans is based on an ancient sign language; it is today also shared by some traditional storytellers. Spoken Mayan languages in general often are very different, which is believed by scholars to have been a result of warfare and some cultural isolation among indigenous Amerindian cultures before the Spanish conquest. Sign language was developed by merchants and others who needed to travel among different Mesoamerican indigenous cultures and communicate with all. In time, the sign language that developed was also adopted by deaf people and their relatives and shaped by local cultural contexts. It is not believed, however, that it developed originally as a means of communication for deaf people.

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