Autoconvocades This term is intimately tied with Argentine protests which literally translates to something like “self-summoned” — a protester who supports a cause without ties to a specific organization, social movement, or political party. The main network of activists organizing events and supporting the victims of the triple lesbicide in Barracas is called Autoconvocades Lesbianes por Barracas , which we translated as Independent Lesbians for Barracas. The word is gender–specific, so if you wanted to clarify that you’re at a protest without marching under a particular banner you could describe yourself as autoconvocado/a/e .
I’m surprised it hasn’t come up in translation troubles before because a non-affiliated protester might also just hit the streets spontaneously, as was the case during December’s cacerolazos , when we translated it as “non-affiliated protester.” We did vote the term cacerolazo as one of our words of 2023, though. Agarrar la pala The Unicode Consortium, the non-profit that decides what emoji we have on our phones, posted samples of new ones we might be getting soon on their website .
Judith pointed out that one could be particularly relevant to Argentines: the shovel. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about shovels here — the emoji could also aptly convey levantar con pala — but when discussing the possible new icon, agarrar la pala came up. “Grab a shovel” or “pick up a shovel” is a pretty cutting and imperativ.