This term is used in Colombia. Is it is also used in other countries? If you've heard it elsewhere please say so in the comments. I saw this translation in this NACLA article about the inspiring resistance of the Misak: Indigenous Community Confronts a Colombian Paper Giant.
They are “reclaiming the territory to reclaim everything.” Indeed.
Perhaps not normally a social justice term, but back in 2016 there was an explosion of bollards in Bogota, which was seen by many as a misuse of city funds by the mayor to cover up other scandals. They even put in bollards to protect other bollards, such as those in this photo (thanks to @ContraGodarria on twitter for the pic).
I have always seen plan lazo imported into English in discussion of Colombian history and politics, so I was surprised by this rendition in this recent very mainstream timeline of US-Colombia relations published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Plan Lazo is widely written about as establishing paramilitaries. Note how the CFR reframes this in the following text:
In response to the persistence of armed guerrilla groups in the countryside, U.S. military advisors, led by General William P. Yarborough, work with the Colombian army to develop a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy known as Plan Lazo (the Snare Plan). The plan centers on public works projects, civilian defense networks, and an aggressive military assault on “independent republics” formed by communist insurgents during La Violencia. Plan Lazo becomes the template for decades of counterinsurgency and civic action programs in Colombia.
(photo is of Yarborough)
I have blogged repeatedly about options for campesino. None of them are great wihch is why I tend to import it. It's a concept that just doesn't translate well since it includes not only family or small-scale farmers but also farmworkers, loggers, artisanal miners, and lots of other people that live in the campo. I liked the way this great article (that helped me see how we need to look both above and below the land to understand land issues in Colombia) went back and forth between using small-scale farmer and campesino throughout, though again, that leaves a lot of people out.
My compa Kath Nygard has lately been trying to convince me to use peasant. As I've blogged before, it's worth nothing that the Via Campesina uses International Peasant Movement as their official translation. I don't think I'm quite there yet, since the connotations in English seem still too closely tied to Monty Python type peasants (see video).
Another cacerolazo tonight in downtown Bogota. These things start from a few distant clinks then blossom out of nowhere. It means there’s still high energy behind ongoing anti-government protests in Colombia and suggests high turnout at mass demonstrations called for tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/wlMJCxHcha
— Dylan Baddour (@DylanBaddour) May 5, 2021
Cacerolazo often gets imported into English, as it has been in the English wikipedia entry. I like this solution but my concern is that often people don't know the term and won't understand it at first. To build stronger movements it is worth translating it at least the first time it comes up.
Sometimes, as in the word reference forum, I've seen it rendered as pot banging. But it's not just any random pot banging! It's pot banging as a political action. My first thought was a pot bang-in - playing on the term sit-in. But that will sound to most listeners just like banging. It's also true that what is magical about this action is that is an action of dispersion, not of concentration. We generally do it in our homes by the window, not gathered together (though in Bogotá last spring sometimes people would gather on street corners to bang together). The term bang out is completely a play on words neologism made up by me, but I like it for conveying this idea of leaning out your window and banging your pot. I've definitely broken a pot from too much banging so don't use your best one, or set aside an old one for this activity!
This is the translation give by a group of this name that is a queer collective land project in Puerto Rico. They are working for food and land sovereignty in Borinken, including designing a solar composting toilet. They are asking for support for their work to share the design and the tools and support to help folks across the island build their own. Brilliant. I'm a huge fan of composting toilets when done right - but it really helps for folks to have support to make that happen.
I will note however that the German word ''Überfremdung'', widely used by anti-immigrant parties, is translated as over-foreignerization and one assumes they mean something entirely different by that. But let's not let them steal the word from us!
Fantastic article here by Allison Corbett about movement T & I (translation and interpretation) - and going beyond T & I. I can't recommend it enough if you care about how we make our movements stronger by making our spaces more multilingual. Love the geneology given and the important nods to my compas Alice and Roberto here. The one correction I would make is that we also had a team of interps at the first US Social Forum in Atlanta, though certainly not as large as we would have liked.
No, this is not a word, it's a tool.
"Diatopix es una herramienta que muestra, en la parte de la Web correspondiente a una lengua, la distribución geográfica del uso de palabras, términos, expresiones, etc. La herramienta usa el motor de búsqueda personalizado de Google y muestra por separado los resultados obtenidos en los principales países donde se usa dicha lengua (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, España, México, Venezuela).
If you are going into Spanish it can be a way to see if you are using a term that will be more widely understood or not. I found it super surprising to see the results for the words parce and parcero, I have always thought of them as very Colombian slang but they have decent googlage for other countries too - and more for Spain than Colombia!
Thanks to Robin, who suggested diatopix in a comment on my post on the term whiteness.
I was reminded of this term by the anti-racism daily, an email I appreciate receiving and recommend. In it they describe sousveillance as "people capturing stories with their own devices (usually smartphones) that will likely counter or disprove the facts presented by those with more power and privilege (Nieman Lab)." The article they link to there has another great description: "Surveillance is looking from on high. It’s what security cameras and dash cams and body cams do, it’s what dash cams and body cams do, and blue light security cameras. It’s what the “authoritative gaze” is, but sousveillance is quite different. It’s looking from below, and it’s attempting to counter an official report that may have been lies."
I thought at first that the translation might be contravigilancia - but I think that's actually counter-surveillance, which is to say efforts to prevent surveillance from above, rather than doing your own surveillance from below. So I did one of my favorite tricks, I went to the wikipedia entry in English and then followed the link on the left to the Spanish entry and, what do you know, the French word is also imported into Spanish. But for those who don't know it (most of us probably) you could first render it as vigilancia inversa.
Protester's videos of police terror in Colombia have been so important in the last few weeks, and offered powerful sousveillance - yet I find myself less and less able to watch the videos of police terror and torture, and find them more and more traumatizing, so not including one here. Still, grateful for the citizen journalists doing this important sousveillance. If you are on twitter please follow me @spaceforpeace where I'm tweeting regularly about the protests (mostly without the difficult videos).
Colombia’s protesters want human rights reforms. The country’s human rights agency may not be much help
As the protests evolved beyond opposition to the government’s regressive tax plan, this question becomes even more salient. In the past, the ombudsman did not engage in the kind of transformational reform that protesters are calling for — and it may not be able to do so now.
What is the role of the Human Rights Ombudsman?
As I detail in my book, the Human Rights Ombudsman is a political institution pioneered during the 1970s in Portugal and Spain to conduct government oversight and protect human rights. This type of agency has mandates to protect a full range of rights, including the right to decent work, housing, health care, food, education and protection from violence and discrimination.
In the Americas, at least 16 countries incorporate this kind of agency at the national level. Some have been pivotal to curbing government overreach, including excessive use of force, as well as controversial policy proposals. For instance, the Bolivian ombudsman forced the government to change course following violent protests over a proposed gas pipeline in 2003.
In Colombia, the ombudsman fields complaints against the government and conducts lengthy investigations. Although unable to impose sanctions on wrongdoers, it can refer cases to prosecutorial bodies, such as the attorney general’s office. The agency also leads mediation efforts and performs “fire alarm” functions that alert others to rights violations.
During the recent unrest, the Colombian ombudsman has documented abuses such as deaths and disappearances of protesters. The agency also helped mediate discrete conflicts, including brief reopenings of several major thoroughfares blockaded by protesters. These actions helped ensure the flow of food, fuel and medicines to population centers in Caquetá, Huila, Tolima, Guaviare and Cauca.
To date, the ombudsman has portrayed itself as an impartial mediator and has not endorsed the broad structural changes sought by the protest organizers.
One of the most valuable tools available to any human rights ombudsman is its “moral authority” to name and shame wrongdoers. Agencies across the Americas have made use of their ties to nongovernmental organizations and the news media or leveraged public opinion to force governments to change laws and practices. This type of leverage can be critical in a crisis in which government forces have engaged in excessive force, as appears to be the case here.
The ombudsman has limited power
However, the ability to use “moral authority” depends on the amount of autonomy granted to the agency. While Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman has some formal independence, it is not fully independent of the elected officials that appoint its leadership and fund the budget. Its design, as well as past fights with the executive branch, have forced the agency to find ways to be minimally intrusive.
In the late 1990s, the agency sought to be a better advocate for human rights by hiring experts with assistance from international human rights organizations. As the Colombian party system splintered, the Human Rights Ombudsman was under less scrutiny from elected officials. For a while, it became more vocal in advocating for peace.
As the political tides turned, the agency came under repeated attacks from President Álvaro Uribe, in office from 2002 to 2010. Since then, two additional presidents from Uribe’s political party have appointed ombudsmen unlikely to challenge their administrations. As a result, human rights ombudsmen in Colombia found ways to advocate for citizens without publicly shaming officials. This saved them from losing their appointments and the bulk of their agency’s budget. This is in stark contrast to what we saw in countries such as Bolivia, where muscular human rights ombudsmen frequently challenged the government.
Protesters have a long list of demands
A second factor that limits the role of the Colombian ombudsman today stems from the wide range of protester demands. What began as opposition to a regressive tax policy quickly tapped into frustrations with President Iván Duque’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and persistent inequality. And while the government tabled the tax measure, it also tabled discussions of proposed changes to health and education policy.
Duque is now facing demands for mass vaccinations, health-care reform, tuition-free universities, assistance to small businesses, income assistance and the protection of vulnerable minorities. While some of these issues are familiar territory for the Human Rights Ombudsman, the protests have taken a decidedly anti-incumbent tone ahead of the presidential and congressional elections scheduled for 2022.
Duque and his party are paying close attention to the new tone of the protests and would quickly rebuke the agency if it were to take a hostile stance toward the government. So, while citizen confidence in this office has risen over time, thanks to its handling of pension payments and other government service issues, this may not last long.
Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman may wade into discrete concerns raised by the protesters but is unlikely to launch broader discussions about police reform. With respect to police overreach, the agency will probably follow what it has done in the past and give a mild response to accusations against members of the military and security apparatus.
The Human Rights Ombudsman’s reluctance to challenge the government on this latest crackdown will leave the space open for organized civil society groups in Colombia, including domestic human rights advocates. After decades of marching and organizing for human rights, there is no shortage of leadership there. However, the net result may be a somewhat tarnished public advocate for human rights.
Erika Moreno (@LaProfeMoreno) is a professor of political science and international relations at Creighton University and the author of “Human Rights Ombudsmen in Latin America: From Justitieombudsman to Defensor del Pueblo” (Cambria Press, 2020).
Globish is a neologism for global English and it is a generally difficult to fully achieve holy grail, much like what tends to be called neutral Spanish rather than global Spanish. Neutral Spanish is one that avoids terms used only in some countries or understood differently across countries, such as la guagua for the bus or the many country specific terms for white person. The term Globish is often used broadly to refer to English that is more accessible to L2, L3, L4 speakers (those who speak English as a second, third, fourth language). Though technically Globish only refers to, as wikipedia puts it, "a subset of the English language formalized
in 2004 by Jean-Paul Nerrière. It uses a subset of standard English
grammar and a list of 1500 English words." It points to how much of English use around the world is between non-native English speakers. The chart documenting this here (only 4% of English use is between native speakers!) is from this article about Globish.
plataforma: coalition not platform
Asistentes al segundo congreso de la plataforma Lgbti por la Paz en Colombia
prison industrial complex: complejo industrial de prisiones
This one does not have great googlage, but I think it works well. Not super tricky, just one I hadn't really thought of before. I ran into it in this article:
Género, cuerpo, racismo y complejo industrial de prisiones: experiencias de personas negras en una cárcel de Bogotá
Hashtivismo only has 327 hits on google but I like it. Yes, you could say activismo hashtag, but again, doesn't hashtivismo sound cooler?
Is it still hashtivism when it both comes from and then again leaps
offline, like #metoo did? Hell yes, hashtivism can be part of a larger
campaign.
I have been endlessly frustrated by seeing this term rendered as the false cognate productive projects. That rendition just won't mean much to English only speakers. I can stand 'income generating projects', which I sometimes see, but I stumbled on this better rendition in the article:
I would note that many of these entrepreneurial ventures by former FARC combatants are not small scale at all, but rather large scale coops - making everything from honey to bags to, my favorite, 'la roja' beer (see photo).
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