I've often wondered how to say token, you know, the one woman on the panel, the one person of color, the one youth - not that aiming for diversity in our organizations is meaningless, but it can be counter productive when it turns into a de rigueur nod that doesn't question the underlying system of domination that makes it more likely that the panel will be a bunch of older white guys. Anyways, in Colombia the only Afro-Colombian in the cabinet is Paula Marcela Moreno, the Minister of Culture. She was recently asked in an El Tiempo article if 'se siente cuota de los democratas' (as in, was she appointed to appease US Congressional Democrats concerns about racism in Colombia and the far greater impact of the conflict on Afro-Colombians). Her answer was 'yo me siento cuota de Dios'. Odd.
By now you must have heard of the spectacular rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, the three U.S. mercenaries (no, I don't think they should have been kidnapped, but by definition that's what they were, I consider 'defense contractor' a euphemism), and 11 military men. Of course I'm very glad they're out, but the timing of it was quite something. Coincidence that it came right after a particularly difficult week for Uribe? Last week the Yidispolitica scandal got blazing hot as the Supreme Court confirmed that indeed the Congressional vote that allowed him to run for a second term, that passed by one vote, was rigged and Yidis sold her vote. As in, though he won the second election, it was not legally held. And then there's the 'only in Colombia' bizarre Tasmania scandal. A former paramilitary thug named Tasmania was before saying that the supreme court was trying to get him to falsely accuse Uribe, but now he says that Uribe's men (his cousin Mario Uribe actually, who is in jail for parapolitics) got him to say that. If you can follow all of that back and forth, which I can't really. At any rate, it was looking hairy there for a few days for ol' Alvaro - but what do you know, now after this rescue he's the big hero. Since the infiltrators who pulled off the rescue had been in there for years, presumably Uribe called the timing. In case you had any doubts about what an amazing chess player the man is, he called it Operacion Jaque. And he took the Queen.
from Diccionario Espasa: me dio jaque, he put me in check tener/traer en jaque, to bother, worry and of course check mate is jaque mate
Segun wikipedia, "es un término posiblemente acuñado por el sociólogocanadienseMarshall McLuhan. Este concepto se refiere a la idea de que, debido a la velocidad de las comunicaciones, toda la sociedad humana comenzaría a transformarse y su estilo de vida se volvería similar al de una aldea. Debido al progreso tecnológico todos los habitantes del planeta empezarían a conocerse unos a otros y a comunicarse de manera instantánea y directa."
Of course lots of people don't have that kind of access. As one of my favorite geographers, Cindi Katz, argues, while the world is getting smaller for some, it's becoming much larger for others (see the recent hardening of Fortress Europe).
But really I blogged this term because I'm still mulling over vereda. Thanks to all who have commented on that post. My current favorite is rural township, but I'd love more thoughts. Anyways, when I saw aldea global in the paper the other day it struck me that it's odd that aldea seems to only get used figuratively in Colombia.
yes, yes, I know, the Real Academia does not recognize this as a real word. and what do you know, there are hardly any women in the RAE. but doesn't it seem ridiculous to you to interpret for a large women's organization and have to call them all miembros? the joys of patriarchal language. well apparently I'm not the only one who'se annoyed. recently the Spanish Minister of Equality (how cool is it that there's a ministry like that?) used 'miembros y miembras' in a speech and set off a whole discussion about this word in Spain.
how we say the world shapes how we see the world shapes how we can be in the world.
The Firefox search bar is a wonderful thing. I use Firefox because of the beauty of open source, but I also love it for making amazing translation tools easy to use. The search I use most is Wordreference. I set up a separate one for Sp>En and one for En>Sp. If you don't already have it you also must must set one up for the all powerful RAE. There's the obvious dictionary.com (actually, to get there in firefox you can just type dict and the word in the address bar), and thesaurus.com. There's also definr. For fun I like the urban dictionary. What I've given you so far are links to the main sites for these pages. Some of these, like wordreference (at the very bottom of a page once you look up a word), have quick links on their pages for adding it to your firefox search bar. The RAE search is here (huge kudos to the designer). For others go here and search for them under all add-ons (lots of other cool ones to get while you're there).
Not in the search bar but also cool: Visuwords graphs a word's relationship to other words. The visual dictionary is good for learning terminology for tests (in theory these types of dictionaries are also good for when you know what it looks like and not what it's called - though I've never had much luck using them that way). If, like me, you still wonder if you want to lie or lay down, check out confusing words. And for pronunciation dudas try the cool collective project of forvo.
Procurador General: Inspector General; Attorney General
I've usually seen Procurador General rendered as Attorney General, but on Colombia Reports I recently saw it as Inspector General. It got me to thinking. The mission of at least the Colombian procuraduría does seem more in line with the definition of an Inspector General that that of an Attorney General. Thoughts? Either way the procuraduría would be the Office of the ... And as if you needed one more sign of just how corrupt the Uribe administration is, the brother of the procurador was recently arrested.
A wildcat strike is a walkout that is not authorized (or supported) by union leadership. Often definitions say that for it to be wildcat it has to happen during a valid contract - but workers often claim that management or union leadership has broken the contract. I would also argue that if workers walk out after a contract has expired, but without elected leadership support, it would be wildcat. At any rate, in the US, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), federal courts have held that wildcat strikes are illegal and that employers may fire workers participating in them. Some might argue wildcat is a derogatory term, though I think it's a fantastic fierce image. This Spanish version is more obviously derogatory. Anyone know better renditions?
I used to have a "sign up for email updates" box from blogarithm on this page. I recently changed it to a feed burner service because blogarithm has been bought out. If you were getting updates from blogarithm you should keep getting them though. Or you could ditch blogarithm like I did and sign up again with the new box on the site if you want a cleaner email - the ones from feed burner look much nicer. Or you could switch over to a reader. I used to keep up on my favorite blogs through blogarithm but have shifted over completely to reading them on google reader, which I find much faster and easier.
No, this great video doesn't use this term, but a friend who is helping the fabulous ACA media team (who did the above video) to subtitle another video of theirs asked for help with it and I've been struggling with the term. The use here is señalado as in when someone (often a demobilized guerilla or paramilitary) says oh so and so used to work with us (which is often not true). These are the best I came up with. Any other suggestions?
ACA has a ton of other great documentaries about Colombia up on youtube here. Certainly not mainstream media.
mainstream media: medios dominantes de comunicación
This rendition caught my eye in the article Traducción y compromiso by Manuel Talens at rebelion.org. He actually renders it as medios dominantes globales but I think they can be medios dominantes in a local context without being globales, though more and more of course they are indeed tied to global conglomerates. El Tiempo, the "leading" newspaper of Colombia, was recently bought by the Planeta group, for example.
the belly of the beast: las entrañas del monstruo; el corazon del monstruo; las entrañas de la bestia
I hear corazon far more in social justice contexts in Colombia. why in English it would be belly and Spanish heart is an interesting question, no? digestion vs love. or lack thereof. but as Jon points out in the comments, for Martí it was entrañas - and of the three, that first combo has the higher googlage. thanks Jon!
an injury to one is an injury to all: un daño contra uno es un daño contra todos
This famous IWW (wobbly) saying is widely used throughout the North American labor (or if you're Canadian - labour) movement. Unions in Latin America widely use the term 'agravio' for this broader sense of injury, so I used to render this as un agravio contra uno ... but really, are folks with limited literacy going to understand that? and does it have a good ring when you shout it to a crowd? not so much. my next try was lo que perjudica a uno perjudica a todos. more understandable. still not very shoutable. and kind of changes the meaning a wee bit, no? so when my friend Jeremy asked about this one, I went hunting for new options on proz. Thanks to David for this one. really, rather obvious. sometimes I make things more complicated than they need to be. but the simple part? yes, let us keep widening the 'all' in an injury to all, and make our solidarity more international.
not really a social justice term, but one of my favorite expressions - and wow, wouldn't it be bad news if this came up in some sticky conflict context and you didn't know what it meant and rendered it literally? This morning there was a constant espantabobos, pero como no somos bobos, sino que mas bien de Seattle, salimos de Bogotá de todas formas - y alcanzamos a ver cantidades de frailejones en el páramo. lindisimo. In my family we have a similar term in English, but for a different phenomena. A "sucker hole" is that little patch of blue in a grey sky that makes you think that it's worth going out on a hike, that surely the sun will come. ha. sucker.
I was asked to by Ana to come up with a translation for this, I agree with her, fantastic verb in Spanish. I mean how great is it to be able to say "solidarizémonos"? Let us be in solidarity (with x cause, or with one another, etc) just doesn't have quite the same ring.
If you have other stumper social justice terms send them this way.
the full word is really source code. funny how the code gets dropped in En, and the source in Sp. feeling depressed about social change? it can help to spend a moment in awe of the beauty and potential of the open source movement.
an article that I recently translated into English for the fabulous Association for Progressive Communications reminded me of this one. APC puts geekiness to work for social justice struggles - not just as in recruit geek volunteers, but really far more thoughtfully think about how different information and communication technologies could help us make different kinds of worlds.
usually as in "firm hand policies" - a polite way of saying ruthless crackdown. there was a disturbing article about women in Central American gangs in the nyt today that mentioned this term and reminded me how bad it sounds when interps use the literal "hard hand". shame the amazing photos aren't online, but still worth reading.
not a tricky term, though I could go on about capitalizing it a la Hardt and Negri or not (I vote not), but really, this is just an excuse to post this great video. Zinn has a whole new graphic version of his classic. (you could read this essay here, but why not have it read to you with fun pictures?)
As in when a speaker is done and wants to name the next person who gets to speak and says, "ahora paso la voz a Amalia" or "I give the floor to Amalia". This is another one of those that sounds really funny with the false cognate in English. Pass the voice? But then regalar el piso sounds pretty weird in Spanish. Ah, the beauty of idiomatic expressions.
Progresivo is one of the funnier false cognates that I keep running in to. In Spanish it's widely understood as a type of rock music. Apparently the term progressive rock exists in English too, it's just not the first thing we think of when we use the term progressive!
You might have thought that invierno meant winter and verano meant summer, but really, in my experience in Colombia and El Salvador this is another one of those "the dictionary is lying" words. Ok, ok, a word where the connotation is quite different than the denotation. In El Salvador it really only meant rainy season. Here in Colombia it often means this (and not just the one rainy season mind you, there are several in a year) - but people also use it to mean just rainy, as in "hizo mucho invierno ayer". Verano generally means not just dry but hot and sunny, as in, "por las tardes hace verano". We have had a lot of invierno around here lately, and far too much of it has been making its way inside our apartment.
As in, the so-called Justice and Peace law in Colombia, es decir, el mal llamado ley de Justicia y Paz. More and more Colombian human rights activists are insisting on just calling it Law 975, since even saying "mal llamado" you still end up associating it with justice and peace.
But there is all sorts of brave work being done for real peace here. There was a truly inspiring march in Bogota (and others around the world) on March 6th called by the Movimiento de victimas de crimenes de estado. I went a little crazy taking pics. Here is one of my faves.
Of course it's not really the same thing since even the most rural place in North America is nowhere near as rural as most veredas, but it's the closest equivalent I could come up with. A vereda is not really even a village, just scattered homes in the jungle in a general area, say, all within a 2 hour walk. If there are a few homes are close together in Colombia they are called a "caserío" (now that you could call village maybe, though it's often barely that). There can be a caserío in a vereda. Vereda in Spain means path, so maybe this originally meant all the homes along one path, but it is no longer that specific. It is, however, (along with corregimiento) a legal division of space inside a municipio - which I actually in Colombia usually render as 'county' since they function more like a US county than a municipality. Of course, Canadians and Brits probably won't get the term county. Ah, the joys of context. (Thanks to Kath for additions on this one)
Anyways, my recent walk with the peace community up to the vereda of Mulatos was amazing.
It turned out that this trip was not only a commemoration of the massacre of the leader of the peace community of San Jose, Luis Eduardo Guerra, and his family and another family, as I had explained in my last letter. It was even more powerful than that.
When Luis Eduardo was killed he was up in the area of Mulatos. For me Mulatos is a long painful 9 hour hike straight up the very end of the Andes, right before it ends at the sea. And really, I mean straight up – not a single switchback, just very steep muddy rocky trails. Somehow the community members do this hike in 5 hours. Mulatos is one of the veredas that many of the peace community members had to flee 15 years ago when they were attacked and bombed by the army.
When Luis Eduardo was killed three years ago he was up in Mulatos working his crops on his old land, helping to prepare the way so that community members could return to live there. Obviously after he was killed that dream was put on hold, but it did not die with him.
Amazingly, though slow judicial investigations confirm that the massacre three years ago was committed by the army, and though the army continues to harass them (just last December they killed another community member), seven brave families moved back to Mulatos on this march! They have declared Mulatos a humanitarian zone, in association with the peace community, and are likewise declaring that they will not participate with any of the armed actors in any way, and asking all actors to stay out of the area.
We hiked by a lot of bombed out houses that people had fled years ago and are now being taken over by the jungle. But these brave folks are moving back into some of them, fixing them up and building new ones. They are even working to clean up the old school, now covered with wasp nests and creepy army graffiti, where a 3 year old girl was killed during an air raid. Of course they are too far away for kids to go to school down the mountain, and getting classes going is one of their first priorities.
The land was gorgeous and crazy fertile. We ate bananas that were growing along the path – much more fun than my standard hiking salmon berries! And I ate my first raw cacao, which has big white fuzzy seed pods inside a big yellow fruit. Tastes absolutely nothing like chocolate. Folks (and dogs) from the community caught huge river shrimp, a wild boar, and an armadillo. There were heliconia flowers growing all over, and trees full of those wacky hanging oropendula bird nests.
I thought that I was going on a pilgrimage to sites of death, and indeed, we did hold very moving ceremonies at the two massacre sites, at each of which the community has built beautiful simple little chapels. But this was not a trip focused on death - it was very much a trip full of life, of carrying on the dream, of building and rebuilding community. There was a lot of laughing and singing, and fun with kids on the trip. The youngest was Luis Eduardo's 7 year old son. He was so proud of going the whole way.
There were about 30 internationals on the trip, who were key to making it safer for them to move back. There were folks from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Argentina and the States. Most were there only for this trip, but the folks from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (that I am doing my dissertation research with) are there year round. They live in the area full time, offering accompaniment to this peace-making process. Peace Brigades comes up to the community once a week. Of course, this accompaniment only works if there are folks around the world that care and are watching along from a distance.
The community is providing such an important example and model for us all of how to resist nonviolently, engage in collective civil disobedience in the middle of a war, and make space for peace and life. I was honored to be with them on their return, and hope to return to visit them again.
ps: We watched the lunar eclipse from Mulatos and it was magical. There is a far less beautiful eclipse of information about what is happening in Colombia, and in general of peaceful resistance to war. Here is a great article with more background about San Jose and the return, written beforehand by a NACLA journalist who was on the trip.
in the last post I argued that base is usually grassroots, but here is another example that occurred to me where, in context, it can refer to organizing
You may have heard of the term christian base communities - a key part of liberation theology. sometimes when people say comunidad de base they mean these, but often they are simply referring to an organized community, be it that they have a strong community council, work groups, or that they are part of some larger campesino organization of what have you.
I am posting today from Turbo, and leave soon for the peace community of San Jose, an organized community if ever there was one.
What is a peace community? In this case it is a group of campesinos who have chosen not to participate in the war in any way, and have asked all of the armed actors (paramilitaries, guerillas and the military) to stay out of their community. As a result they have been attacked by all sides. In their eleven years they have suffered over 160 violent deaths. Three years ago one of their leaders was killed in a horrific massacre with his family and another family. Luis Eduardo Guerra had only a few years earlier come to the School of the Americas vigil to denounce attacks on the peace community. (that link has more info on the massacre)
The brigade accused of killing him was led by an SOA graduate. Since his death the community has bravely continued sending community members to speak at the SOA vigil in the US about the attacks and to work in solidarity with us to end US military involvement in Colombia. I have been honored to interpret for them. Now it's my turn to go to the community in our joint struggle against militarism.
February 21st will be the third anniversary of the massacre, and I am going with the community on their "return" – a three day hike up to where Luis Eduardo and the others were killed. This is territory that is seriously disputed between the guerillas and the military and the paramilitaries. There will be a big group of folks from the community and a significant number of international accompaniers on this hike, which helps with safety, but there are no guarantees. Please send us all lots of safety wishes. I'll send a report on how it goes when I get back at the end of the month.
I heard this rendered as "base work" - which has got to be one of the all time most dangerous false cognates.
in other news I found fabulous affordable housing in the funky neighborhood of la Macarena. yay!
I've (reasonably) been asked to explain why it bugs me so much that base gets mistranslated with its cognate. To me the first connotation that comes to mind with "base" is low, and in some contexts it could even be misunderstood as degrading. yikes! The next definition that would come to me for "base" would be military base - which might actually seem to make sense depending on the context, and again would be a total misunderstanding. Base is commonly mistranslated with its cognate, not just as part of this term. bad news! avoid it!
Of course "work" means something very different than organizing - but usually in movement contexts speakers are really referring specifically to organizing with this phrase, which is understood in Spanish, but needs to be specified in English.
The first if the standard, and the easier and quicker term, but sometimes I wonder if low literacy listeners get it - which is when I would turn to either of the latter two, or if in a real pinch while doing simultaneous, just 'vivienda al alcance'.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines "affordable" as housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a household's monthly income. That includes the cost of utilities. Other public agencies sometimes define affordable housing as those units that are subsidized such that renters or owners do not pay more than that 30%. The number of units with those kinds of subsidies has been cut drastically in recent years. Sadly way way too many people, in the US and around the world, pay far more than 30%.
Right now I'm looking hard for some housing that's affordable, sunny, and in the Macarena neighborhood of Bogotá. Wish me luck!
My other bloglooks at colonial patterns in international solidarity and ways that we might change them, and talks about my research on international accompaniment and how it uses difference and privilege to make space for peace. The latest entries are listed below.
By now you must have heard of the spectacular rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, the three U.S. mercenaries (no, I don't think they should have been kidnapped, but by 
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