Spanish For Social Change

cartoneros: urban salvagers I recently saw a great documentary called Cartoneros , a short version of which is below. They used scavenger f...

organización de base: grassroots organization I've heard the false cognate, base organization, more than once. It's a particularly ...

militante: activist; fighter On Friday Democracy Now! covered President Carter calling Cheney a militant. Webster's has a militant lis...

walkout: huelga escolar I like that in Spanish this tactic is more clearly related to a worker's strike - in English it makes it sound l...

the day after Evo was on the daily show Jon Stewart made a joke about the interpreting! I can't quite decide if he's saying it was ...

animador(a): organizer This is often mis-translated with the false cognate, and somehow when I hear it I think of that woman on the Love Boa...

Evo Morales is all over the US left media. Jon Stewart had him on the Daily Show! In around minute three he goes over all of his campaign...

concertacion: concertation; consensus building Yesterday Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, was on Democracy Now (see it here - and sig...

day laborer: jornalero (Mex, and thus used most in US) the National Day Laborer Organizing Network is the Red Nacional de Jornaleros. Why ...

squatters: okupas (Spain) In Spain it seems squatters are more likely to be the young anarchist punk types you're likely to see in a squ...

Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation ( WHINSEC): Instituto de Cooperación para la Seguridad Hemisférica This is the creepy ...

catracho: Honduran slang. equivalent to chapin for Guatemalan and guanaco for Savadoran. (thanks to Andres Thomas Conteris for this one)

astroturf: movimiento blanco (in Mexico) A derogatory term used for a movement we don't believe is truly grassroots but consider to be a...

gender queer: no conformista a base de genero This really just comes from the other way of saying gender queer in English, which is gender n...

squat: casa tomada (o edificio tomado) (or okupa in Spain - see also entry for squatters) I saw this term used in this semana article on T...

campesino: campesino (see below for notes on small farmer and/or peasant) I'm finally back home after all my conferencing. At the Lati...

(carbon) offsets : compensaciones (de emisiones) Sometimes called offsetting projects, which I would render as proyectos de compensacion de ...

living wage: salario digno living wage is completely misdefined on answers.com, which led to great frustration as I tried to explain this co...

able-bodied: persona sin discapacidades I've been chewing on this one since my first post on ablism. It's really so strange that th...

netizen: ciudadano internauta my colleague Tori raised the good point that limited English speakers might not recognize this term if you...

correr la voz: spread the word obviously not run, or spill, the voice - though doesn't that sound strangely cool?

encuentro: meeting, conference, gathering, workshop It sounds so much more prosaic in English. I wish I could come up with something that h...

Are you studying obscure legal terminology for a certification test? ah, that endless interpreter endeavor ... I have crazy huge collections...

lactivism: lactivismo Yes, a neologism in both languages, but the Spanish version does actually have some minor googlage. Here is the wikipe...

Accountability: Rendicion de cuentas; Responsabilidad por; Responsabilidad a (to hold accountable: responsabilizar) There are three senses o...