GRIM PLIGHT FACES DEAF IN MEXICO.

Byline: Anthony DePalma The New York Times

It is one of the first things they learn: the right hand, palm up, resting atop the left hand, palm down. In Mexican sign language this is the United States, and to deaf Mexicans the United States is a glint of hope in a dark and silent world.

Even a glimpse of life here gives some idea why. For most deaf Mexicans, there are no teletype telephone services, like those common in the United States. No doorbells have lights attached, no smoke alarms emit flashes and no television programs have closed captions.

If they can find work, the deaf do the most menial of jobs, cleaning floors or sanding wood. The legal minimum wage is about $3 a day, but the deaf often find their employers paying them less than other workers. For many, begging on the subway or selling cards printed with the sign-language alphabet is the way to survive.

In the eyes of Mexican law, the deaf are considered incompetent. They cannot hold a driver's license, nor can they buy a house unless a hearing person co-signs the contract. There are only six government schools for the deaf in Mexico, all ending at the sixth grade, and six private schools, only one going through middle school. And because there is no standard sign language, words are signed differently in Mexico's north and south.

Jorge Badillo Huerta, director of the National School for the Deaf in Mexico City, said that conditions in Mexico are so grim that 80 percent of deaf adults go to the United States.

Some, in desperation, chase empty promises. Law-enforcement officials in New York say 57 deaf Mexican immigrants, apparently lured by the hope of better pay, were held in virtual slavery in two cramped apartments in Queens and forced to work peddling trinkets on the subway.

``If President Ernesto Zedillo wants to understand how all this happened in New York, all he has to do is take a look in his own back yard,'' said Luis Fernandez Pintos, a deaf 17-year-old in Mexico City who played basketball with deaf friends on Wednesday, the same night that Zedillo, in Chicago, condemned what had happened to the Mexican immigrants in New York.

In a country of many poor and marginalized people, the deaf are almost invisible. The national statistics institute figures that about 630,000 Mexicans out of 96 million people have serious hearing problems. The Mexican Institute for Hearing and Speech Pathology estimates that 9,000 Mexicans are profoundly deaf. But most advocates say the actual number of deaf people is much higher.

Imelda Santiago Garcia, 19, and her brother, Ismael Santiago Garcia, 22, both deaf since birth, know well the poverty and exploitation that are common here - as well as the deep isolation sometimes broken only by a small, almost cultlike circle of the deaf themselves.

Imelda Santiago, with her long brown hair and easy smile, rarely ventures from the tiny house embedded in an enormous slum called Nezahualcoyotl on the outskirts of Mexico City, where she lives with her parents and another brother and sister, who all can hear.

Her brother Ismael, however, was always in the street, looking for adventure with his close group of deaf friends, who constantly showed him the palm up, palm down sign that they said meant money and a better life.

When Ismael walked out of the house 14 months ago, saying he was going to the United States, Imelda wanted to go too. But after seeing television images of the 57 immigrants, including her brother, who had been crowded into the Queens apartments, Imelda said through her sister that ``America is ugly'' and that she wants her brother to come back.

While the deaf in rural Mexico tend to be benignly neglected, in a few cities people like Imelda can get some special training. Her mother, Juana Ofelia Garcia de Santiago, proudly takes a photograph from the turquoise wall of her home showing Imelda in one of her grammar school classes, where she learned the basics of signing and reading lips. Another photo shows Ismael as a bright 12-year-old, fascinated with soccer and mechanical drawing.

``We are a poor family, and for me, as the mother of two deaf children, it was not a struggle that lasted just a few months but of years to teach them what was right and what was wrong,'' Garcia de Santiago said.

One day, after suffering the taunts and sneers of her classmates, Imelda simply told her parents, ``No more school.'' Now she hopes to be able to sell to others the kind of dresses she makes for her mother.

As for Ismael, after finishing middle school he took a job in a bicycle factory, greasing axles. It did not last long. Then he went to work in a small woodworking shop, where he sanded the pieces of rustic tables and chairs.

He worked hard, his mother said, and gave her about $7 a week to help run the house. He kept the rest of his salary in a box in his dresser. On Sundays he played soccer with a group of deaf friends.

In time, those friends had more influence over him than his family, said his sister Pilar, 20. They constantly berated Mexico and held up the United States as a place where a deaf person could lead a wonderful life.

His mother had taught him that even though he was deaf, his hands could do work. Still, Ismael sometimes sneaked to the subway to sell small cards that said ``I am deaf,'' for a peso, roughly 10 cents U.S. One day his mother found one of the cards and reproached him. He said there was nothing wrong with what he had done.