University Honors

Disabilities affect the lives of people worldwide in the present and in the past. Hearingimpairment is one rather common disability, yet it is largely misunderstood and stigmatized. InMexico, hearing-impaired persons are still denied many rights able-bodied people possess.Contemporary views of deafness in Mexico have tended to emphasize the biomedical model,which recognizes deafness as an impairment and something that requires fixing. To this end,oralism, hearing aids, and cochlear implants are standard. Framed within disability studies, thisresearch project is an effort to understand and challenge this ableist perspective that persists inMexico today through an interdisciplinary study of Deaf Mexican history. One of the main goalsfor this paper is to demonstrate that ableism and the biomedical model of disability derive from along history of Western, Christian thought which was imported to Mexico by the Spanish startingin the early 16th century during colonization. In the pages ahead, this paper explores influencesof Catholicism and Spanish colonial structures in perpetuating ableism and the biomedical modelof disability through close analysis of historical theological commentary and Indigenous,Spanish, and Mexican interpretations of deafness and disability.