caserio: hamlet/ small village

Following up on my last post on the translation of the Colombian term vereda (which means quite different things in other countries, including path in Spain and alley or lane in Venezuela) I noticed that in this recent useful article in NACLA about reactions to the peace process in Putumayo, Winifred Tate seems to be translating vereda as hamlet. I think this is a mistranslation and may be due to a common confusion as to the legal definition of vereda in Colombia. Though vereda sometimes gets used to refer to the rural area where a few homes are grouped together, technically a Colombian vereda is a large sprawling rural area, most of which does not have homes anywhere near each other. Inside a vereda there is generally at least one caserio, or small settlement, ie hamlet - though really, that term always sounds quaint and a bit hobbit like to me so I prefer to translate it as small village.

(photo from the Tate article: Alianza members light candles welcoming peace in Mocoa, the departmental capitol of Putumayo (Photo courtesy of Paula Fernández Seijo))

vereda (Col): rural community

In the past I have blogged vereda as township, which I still like - but this rendition works well if you are not being picky about levels of government, and want to use a broader English that could be more easily understood outside of the US (and yes, I realize that is ironic when I used the very US term county in my last post).

I noticed this translation of the term in the video below, put out recently by the great folks at FOR Peace Presence, detailing the resistance of a rural community that they accompany - much of whose space was illegally taken over by a military base and who have refused to leave despite decades of pressure from the military.


Militarization and Peace from forpeacepresence on Vimeo.

corregimiento: county subdivision

After my last post on zonas veredales Adam Isacson responded:



Here is the pyramid he linked (from wikipedia),

and here is my link to the wiki entry on corregimiento that uses the term county subdivision.