Spanish For Social Change

beachhead : cabeza de playa Well I for one wouldn't have guessed this would be a literal translation, but what do you know - it is. And ...

token: cuota 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 t...

jaque: check By now you must have heard of the spectacular rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, the three U.S. mercenaries (no, I don't think th...

global village: aldea global Segun wikipedia , "es un término posiblemente acuñado por el sociólogo canadiense Marshall McLuhan . Est...

miembra: member yes, yes, I know, the Real Academia does not recognize this as a real word. and what do you know, there are hardly any wome...

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 tra...

Procurador General: Inspector General; Attorney General I've usually seen Procurador General rendered as Attorney General, but on Colomb...

wildcat strike: huelga loca (Col) A wildcat strike is a walkout that is not authorized (or supported) by union leadership. Often definitio...

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 b...

señalado: singled out, fingered (better options?) No, this great video doesn't use this term, but a friend who is helping the fabulo...

mainstream media: medios dominantes de comunicación This rendition caught my eye in the article Traducción y compromiso by Manuel Talens at...

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 just...

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...

espantabobos: drizzle not really a social justice term, but one of my favorite expressions - and wow, wouldn't it be bad news if this ...

solidarizar: be/work/struggle in solidarity with I was asked to by Ana to come up with a translation for this, I agree with her, fantastic v...

open source: codigo abierto the full word is really source code. funny how the code gets dropped in En, and the source in Sp. feeling depr...

mano dura: firm hand usually as in "firm hand policies" - a polite way of saying ruthless crackdown. there was a disturbing artic...

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...