Velatón is a neologism in Spanish, recently used for an event held on July 8th, 2018 in over 100 cities across the world and across Colombia that was essentially a rolling wave of candlelight vigils to call for an end to the wave of assasinations of social leaders in Colombia.The implementation of the peace accord in Colombia has been seriously crippled in various ways - but one of the most serious is these murders of leaders, almost all of whom were members of their local Junta de Acción Comunal and organizing to support the return of land that was stolen during the war. This puts organizing in those communities back years, as of course others are then afraid to step up.
We need increased and continued international pressure to stop these attacks. Please keep your eye on this and keep spreading the word about it, perhaps by sharing this new word. To honor this organizing, and the creative neologism in Spanish, I suggest creating a parallel neologism in English: candlethon.
Note: I thought that this word was created for this event but I was wrong. Thanks to my tocaya Sara Tufano on twitter (who does great work there for peace and I recommend following @SaraTufanoz) quien cuenta que "Ya había sido usado en Chile, por ejemplo, en memoria de los estudiantes asesinados en la marcha en Valparaíso. Hubo velatón también por el caso de los 43 estudiantes mexicanos asesinados."
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