Friday, September 26, 2014

feminicidio: feminicide (not femicide)

femicide and feminicide are two different things

as the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission puts it:

What is femicide?
Femicide is defined as the killing of women, female homicide, or the murder of a person based on the fact that she is female. 

What is feminicide?
Feminicide is a political term. It encompasses more than femicide because it holds responsible not only the male perpetrators but also the state and judicial structures that normalize misogyny. Feminicide connotes not only the murder of women by men because they are women but also indicates state responsibility for these murders whether through the commission of the actual killing, toleration of the perpetrators’ acts of violence, or omission of state responsibility to ensure the safety of its female citizens. In Guatemala, feminicide is a crime that exists because of the absence of state guarantees to protect the rights of women. 

more from them on why this is happening in Guate is here

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

sanguijuela: bloodsucker

Amazing debate in the Colombian Congress today about Uribe's paramilitary ties.  I'm in awe and deep gratitude for the courage of Ivan Cepeda and Claudia Lopez for getting this a public hearing. Please send them good energy/pray for their safety - they are taking huge risks to build peace and justice in Colombia. 

One of the great headlines about the debate today, in El Espectador, was "Claudia López comparó a Urie con "una sanguijuela huyendo por una alcantarilla." So sanguijuella could also be rendered as leech, but in this context bloodsucker fleeing down a gutter sounds so much better. 

Thursday, September 11, 2014

despojo: dispossession (with fab music video)

Gorgeous music video below with some of my all time favorite committed artists: Silvio Rodriguez, calle 13, and Gael García-Bernal, with English subtitles no less.  Strangely though the subtitles render despojo as sorcery.  Well, yes, of a sort.  The accumulation through dispossession at the heart of capitalist neoliberalism requires that we all fall into a trance where things like private property become common sense and the commons are made strange.  Still, I really don't think that's what they meant in the song.  But who knows.  Check it out.


Thursday, September 4, 2014

libreta militar: military passbook

Young men in Colombia have to show their military passbook to get a job or go to university.  It serves as proof that they have done their obligatory year of military service, or somehow managed to get out of it.

The odd thing about this term is that it is still called a libreta in Colombia, but in actual practice it looks like an ID card.  But since the term used is libreta, and passbook conveys more of a sense of having, well, passed a requirement, I like this rendition - but I would love to hear what other people are using.  It often seems to be left in Spanish, but I worry that decreases the overall comprehension and ease for listeners and readers. 

Fabulously the court recently ruled that transgender persons can no longer be required to show a military passbook as a condition of employment.  Technically victims of the war are also free of the requirement, but Anna Vogt writes here about how hard that has been in practice.