Occupy and 15-M: How it all began

Guerrilla Translation is the product of a socio-political moment in history. The collective was formed in the wake of important political turning points and political movements in 2011: 15-M in Spain and the Occupy movement in the US. The Guerrilla Translation founders, spanning both countries and cultural spheres, understood that something important was brewing globally but that there was not necessarily a lot of communication or sharing happening across borders between these movements. As political activists with language skills, they saw an opportunity to bridge gaps between communities and share important information about the momentous developments and political transformation taking shape. Thus, in 2013 Guerrilla Translation was born. 

At that time, people were starting to take a look back and reflect on everything that had happened over the previous two years. One of our early translations was of an article by Amador Fernández-Savater entitled ‘Seeing the Invisible: on Unicorns and the 15-M Movement’, in which the author describes a new kind of electric charge in the years following 15M. In the words of one protestor quoted: ‘Screw the anniversary, we fight everyday, we could just as well celebrate on the 3rd of February or the 11th of June. If the media has pronounced us dead, fine, now we’ll be able to work in peace!’ Amador goes on to describe the changes that had taken place and the new political landscape that had formed in Spain, featuring inclusive communities willing to both recognise and transcend differences among participants. For once, politics had become a unifier, a source of possibility and growth instead of frustration.

In another article translated from Spanish, ‘Spain’s Micro-Utopias: The 15M Movement and its Prototypes’, Bernardo Gutiérrez talks about the proliferation of new models for political organisation and working together that characterised the movement. By focusing on the movement’s ‘creative, innovative, proposal-oriented nature’, he reflects on the sheer power exhibited by the vast array of ‘utopian model’ prototypes emerging from 15-M and associated movements. He goes on to detail fifteen of these micro-utopia prototypes, including the micro-utopia of the Commons, a topic that would, years later, come to be very important in Guerrilla Translation’s work as translators, as well as its expansion into Guerrilla Media Collective and the development of the DisCO model. 

This proliferation of micro-utopias in Spain, however, did not mean that there were not lessons to be learned from other movements abroad. In the US, the Occupy movement had attained recognition on a scale that other grassroots political movements had not attained in years, and while austerity was one of the driving forces behind the protests in Spain, in the US inequalities in the treatment of debt occupied a leading role (pun intended). In an interview translated by GT under the title Ocupy, la deuda y los límites históricos del capitalismo, David Graeber discusses how debt is one of the most powerful tools used to create hierarchies of inequality and therefore has always been one of the very first things to be dismantled in revolutions throughout history. He also discusses how the concept of the 99% enabled Americans to see that (participatory) political systems without politicians are possible, rather closely mirroring the grassroots, utopian developments happening at the time in Spain.

As the world was reflecting on all of the new realisations and practices that had emerged from the previous two years, the importance of creating narratives came into the spotlight as well. How should we be telling the story of what had happened and how would that influence people’s view of these social movements in the future. Guerrilla Translation translated Amador Fernández-Savater’s The Interruption of the Dominant Narrative, an interview with Colectivo Enmedio, a collective of artists frustrated with the lack of politics in art spaces and institutions. In this interview the collective stresses that art is crucial for creating the narratives that ultimately guide and shape people’s political inclinations and beliefs. In short, art cannot take a neutral stance.

Guerrilla Translation understood this from the very beginning and, viewing translation as an art rather than just another marketable skill, we decided that our craft must contribute to the shaping of the new political narrative and continue to transcend borders, languages and differences, just like the original street protests back in 2011.  

Produced by Guerrilla Translation under a Peer Production License.

– Article written by Timothy McKeon