New Words #28: Who Can?

Somebody, that’s who

A few days ago, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Eva Longoria used the slogan “She se puede,” and I immediately thought: My Twitter feed is about to be a mess.

I opened the app and was greeted by a deluge of posts mocking Longoria’s ungrammaticality. The majority of them asserted that she had, in effect, proposed “She we can” as a slogan. The response was predictable, but that’s not what the phrase means. At all.

The misunderstanding is simple enough. The people posting “She we can” were clearly familiar with the Obama campaign slogan “Yes, we can,” and the fact that it was inspired by Dolores Huerta’s phrase “¡Sí, se puede!” Even people who have never taken a single Spanish class know that sí means yes, and these folks assumed se puede must mean we can. But it’s way more interesting than that.

Se puede is an example of the impersonal se, one of my favorite features of Spanish grammar. Like many languages, Spanish includes reflexive verbs—the kind where the action of the verb reflects back on the subject. Common examples include a person washing their own hands, putting clothes on their own body, or (like me when I was reading those tweets) scratching their own head. Spanish speakers use that same construction to refer to actions that aren’t necessarily performed by a specific person or group; these are just conditions that exist, things that happen. For example, a store might post a sign that reads Se habla español, meaning that Spanish is spoken at that location—without promising that every employee (or any particular employee) speaks Spanish. Se puede is a form of a verb that corresponds roughly to the English phrase to be able to; in this impersonal form, we might think of it as indicating that something is possible or can be done.

Depiction of Dolores Huerta in a storefront mural in San Francisco. Photo: Gary Stevens, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Moreover, while sí can mean yes, that’s not all it’s for! The same word can also be used for emphasis in an affirmative statement. According to the United Farm Workers' account of the phrase’s origin, fellow labor leaders were saying, “¡No se puede!” (which could translate as “It’s impossible!” or “It can’t be done!”), and Huerta replied, “¡Sí, se puede!” English speakers might respond to the negative “It can’t be done!” with either “Yes, it can!” (equivalent to the yes meaning of sí) or “It can be done!” (equivalent to the emphatic function of sí). Despite the difference in wording, both can be considered valid translations of the Spanish phrase in this context.

Dolores Huerta speaks in 2012 at the induction of the Farm Worker Movement into the United States Labor Hall of Honor. US Department of Labor, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Incidentally, the bilingual slogan “She se puede” was not just made up last week, nor was it coined by Eva Longoria. Electoral politics wasn’t even its original focus. The UFW has been using this phrase since 2020 to call attention to “the vital contributions of the Latina community in forging social, economic, and political change in the United States” and to the “added challenges [they face] in the fight for social justice.” Like Huerta’s original phrase, this latest adaptation appears quite simple but leaves room for multiple interpretations.

So is “She se puede” grammatically correct? Well, it definitely isn’t incorrect in the “she we can” sort of way so many folks rushed to denounce on Twitter. At the same time, if mixing an impersonal reflexive pronoun in Spanish with a personal subject pronoun in English is something you’d rather not do, fair enough. (As a special bonus conundrum for me, the Irish word that shares both its meaning and its pronunciation with the English word she is spelled . . . wait for it . . . sí. I’ve written before about the way my Irish interferes with my Spanish, and let’s just say I didn’t need any additional encouragement to get sí mixed up with sí.) What matters here is not whether this bilingual slogan passes muster with purists in either language; what matters is that we try to understand what the play on words means to the communities and speakers who choose to use it.

A Humble Suggestion

While we’re on the topic of Dolores Huerta, have you seen Dolores, the remarkable 2018 documentary by Peter Bratt? For those of us in the United States, it is available to stream via PBS Passport or on Kanopy (using your public library card or university library access). Read here about how the director became involved in the project and approached working with a subject who is at once a renowned activist and a deeply private individual.

Self-Promotion Corner

I’m delighted to share my translation of “A House in the Country,” by the Bolivian poet Adela Zamudio, in the inaugural issue of New Verse Review. And another of my Zamudio translations is coming up in NVR’s winter issue!

Here, Look at My Cats

Perhaps you would welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Alexis: I’ll go be near my human woman and see about getting some snuggles. David: And I shall be nearer! Hello! I’m here! You’re welcome!

May we all approach the week ahead like a David cat, confident in the knowledge that our mere presence improves any situation in which we might find ourselves.

Laura