Tuesday, March 31, 2015

craftivism: actiartesanismo?!?

I am totally just making this up.  Has anyone heard any other version being actually used on the ground, not in translation?

Artivism is so much easier to render as artivismo - maybe the solution is to upgrade all craftivism to artivism? But that may be a faux paux since it is of course political to reclaim and honor crafts as crafts.

update: Manuel Cedeño, in Caracas, suggests the fabulous option of artesanía militante

Saturday, March 21, 2015

work to rule: huelga de celo?

A work slowdown is an operación tortuga, but how would you translate a "work-to-rule" action? Huelga de celo? Trabajar a reglamento? Trabajar a la letra de la descripción de trabajo?  I like huelga de celo but I'm not sure how widely it would be understood outside of Spain.  This is not as common a job action in most of Latin America as it is in the US and Canada.

Labour actions are on my mind because I am being legally ordered by the administration of York University to cross the TA picket line next week.  I will not be crossing. 

I've posted more about the strike on my other blog.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

judicialización (take three)

I've posted twice before about this term, rendering it as first bogus/trumped up/false criminal charges and then malicious prosecution on trumped up charge.  What neither of those renditions conveys, however, is that this is a tactic used by the state against activists to discredit their activism (particularly those activists working for change in and by the state). I am now leaning towards "criminalization of activists" as a rendition.  I would love input and thoughts from those who have been translating this term regularly, particularly for the many cases of it ongoing in Colombia today. 

I went to a great talk last week by geographer Shiri Pasternak where she described how Chief Theresa Spence's fast in Ottawa, Canada for government attention to a serious humanitarian emergency in the Attawapiskat First Nation was discredited in this way by the Canadian state, who chose this time to make a big stink out of minor financial irregularities on her reserve. 

It reminded me that this strategy is actually one that has been promoted by the US army, something I failed to mention in my other two blog posts on the term.  The leaked training manuals of the US army's School of the Americas for Latin American military officers include this as one of the techniques to be used on activists, along with other lovely techniques like taking photos of and then threatening their children, as well as forms of more physical torture.  As Alfred McCoy has documented so well, those manuals were based on the CIA's Project X research at Fort Huachuca. 

As a US citizen and Canadian resident it makes me sick that we have exported these methods for crushing social movements not only South, but apparently also North.  But then, First Nations reserves are the global South inside the North. 

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

gremio económico (Col): trade organization



In the same  interview of a leader in the Dignidad Agropecuaria Colombiana (Colombian Agricultural Dignity) movement that I mentioned in my last post this translation is used.  It's an odd one, but I've always struggled to distinguish between gremios and gremios económicos in Colombian Spanish.  I don't love it but it seems to get the job done.  Any other options out there folks are using?