Spanish For Social Change

the Bern: el Quemazón When was the last time a major US presidential candidate had a corrido written for them? Ever? Check out this fabul...

integrity: coherencia This translation comes from Berta Caceres, recently assassinated in Honduras for her activism. Read the logic for it...

pelon: geezer Really pelon just means bald guy, but it IS often used this way. I learned this translation of the term in the unusually goo...

harta: fed up This is a fabulous short video about the Matria collective organizing against violence and patriarchy in Honduras and their ...

mansplain: machoxplicar Thanks to Ann Deslandes for posing the question of how to translate this, and to Diana Ojeda for coming up with ...

personero: local ombudsperson (Colombia) Just "local ombudsman" is the translation that Winifred Tate uses in her book: Drugs,...

Governor Jerry Brown used this term in his state of the state of California speech last week, saying that we need to "decarbonize the...

A corporatocracy is a society or system that is governed or controlled by corporations. The urban dictionary is more specific, saying that i...

Yo he sido climariana por los ultimos dos años - lo cual es a veces un reto en el invierno acá en Ontario, Canada. Pero igual, voy cada sema...

The 16 min video below looks at the impact of coal in the global South, where coal use is growing even as it decreases in the North. It incl...

I have long struggled to find the best way to translate this classic labour slogan. In the fabulous video below (well worth watching) there ...

I suppose the full term in English is impeachment proceedings, but we widely just say impeachment. Dilma Roussef is facing a right wing att...

The type of oil that comes out of the tar sands is called bitumen, which is spelled the same in Spanish, though in English the accent is on ...

As a follow-up to last weeks wind farm post , the matching term would be turbina eólica - but I think the more common term is molino de vien...

O mas formalmente parque de energia eólica, o proyecto de energia eólica. Wind energy seria energia eólica Lo aprendí en este lindisimo vi...

I've posted before about sindicatos charros in Mexico being yellow dog unions. But I ran into another Mexican use of the term here i...

Ok, not necessarily social justice related, just a term I like!

When I posted before about how to translate 'el negro' used as a nickname I said that blackie didn't seem like a great option, ...

I'm at this wonderful two day workshop on Colombia full of Colombianists whose work I've been reading for years.  But I just learned...

I'm talking here of when cacique gets used outside of its traditional indigenous referent. I've used strongman for both this and for...

Ok, my summer blogging break is over! Of course I should be preparing my courses instead, but I'm motivated to post because I have been ...

As I understand it, this term refers to people changing how they classify themselves on the census and other official forms, without changin...

A bit like the last term I blogged, marica , negro is widely used somewhat affectionately in Colombia. Translating it as black man doesn...

This term gets used incredibly widely in Colombia. Lots of straight people with otherwise great politics use it as a teasing term of affecti...

I am totally making this one up, but I kind of love it and think it would be as understandable as the English neologism. If you've r...