Spanish For Social Change

so-called: mal llamado As in, the so-called Justice and Peace law in Colombia, es decir, el mal llamado ley de Justicia y Paz . More and mo...

vereda: township (Col) Of course it's not really the same thing since even the most rural place in North America is nowhere near as rur...

comunidad de base: organized community in the last post I argued that base is usually grassroots, but here is another example that occurred ...

trabajo de base: grassroots organizing I heard this rendered as "base work" - which has got to be one of the all time most dangero...

affordable housing: vivienda asequible, vivienda al alcance economico, vivienda economicamente accesible The first if the standard, and the ...

town hall meeting: cabildo abierto Sometimes, though less so, also called 'cabildo general'. I also recently heard "evento de ...

ground: poner polo a tierra In both English and Spanish this term comes from the electrical meaning , but is used metaphorically to mean to ...

veeduria: oversight We could certainty use more of it, in government institutions, NGO's, and in movements. I am a big fan of the Quake...

shopdrop: deja-compras Ready to engage in some anti-capitalist monkey wrenching after that commodity fest? Try shopdropping . Thanks to Jon...

commodity fetishism: fetichismo de la mercancía commodity is widely rendered as mercancía in academic literature (and in lefty rags, actuall...

people of color: gente no blanca This is a term in English that points to the politics of the person using the term, in particular to a reco...

sororidad: sisterhood Certainly not sorority! Maybe there are some feminist sororities out there, but they tend not to be. This term seems ...

hit the streets: quemar pavimento This is the first year in many many that I'm not hitting the streets on this weekend to close the Scho...

Spanglish: Inglañol Why do we always just leave it as Spanglish? English hegemony just maybe? The googlage difference between these two ter...

campesino: family farmer (campesino) In my previous entry for campesino I argued for importing, and keeping it as campesino. I still think...

observatorio: watch Observatorio de racismo, observatorio de genero y justicia, observatorio de inmigracion ... there are tons of them here ...

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 ...