Spanish For Social Change

empire: imperio 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...

pasar la voz: give the floor As in when a speaker is done and wants to name the next person who gets to speak and says, "ahora paso la ...

progressive: progresista Progresivo is one of the funnier false cognates that I keep running in to. In Spanish it's widely understood a...

invierno: rainy, or rainy season You might have thought that invierno meant winter and verano meant summer, but really, in my experience in ...

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 ...