paño de agua tibia: piecemeal measure

Obviously this is not a literal translation, but I think it is a far more accurate one for most uses of this term. I got this rendition from the great article:

 

Alves, J. A. (2019). “Esa paz blanca, esa paz de muerte”: Peacetime, Wartime, and Black Impossible Chronos in Postconflict Colombia. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 24(3), 653-671. https://doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12424