THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOGNIZING SIGN LANGUAGES FOR THE FULL GUARANTEE OF DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, AND INCLUSION OF LATIN AMERICAN DEAF COMMUNITIES

By observing the millennial trajectory of deaf people in the world, it can be seen that existing in a listening society is not a very simple exercise. Deaf communities and their sign languages suffered their development process in hiding, and for a very long time in the history of humanity, even their lives were forbidden. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948), after the horrors of World War II, people with hearing disabilities had their right to live assured, and the deafener activism of the Associations of the Deaf around the planet has achieved other rights inherent to deaf people such as communication, education, regarding their culture and expression of sign language. However, even today, Latin American deaf communities suffer from linguistic and communication barriers due to the lack of recognition and dissemination of their mother tongues: signs. Thus, it is necessary to make an analysis of how the recognition of sign languages in the field of Constitutional Law can be an important path for the consolidation of democracy and freedom of expression of the deaf. It is essential to know that democracy must be accessible to all people and groups, and that it is only fully achieved from the exercise of language, autonomy and access to basic rights by all citizens, regardless of their existential condition. Therefore, with a historical and dialectical analysis, the relevance of the recognition of sign language for maintenance and full guarantee of the democratic exercise and freedom of expression of Latin American deaf people will be addressed. The hypothesis of this research is the interference of the constitutional recognition of linguistic rights in the guarantee of access to fundamental rights by deaf communities. In this sense, the result that becomes clear is that the dissemination of sign language communication is an important decisive marker to ensure the full enjoyment of fundamental, civil and democratic rights by the deaf.