Guachimán
The watchman — the security guard on the door, in the car park, or outside the building all night.
Related lesson: Venezuelan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Déjale las llaves al guachimán del edificio.
Leave the keys with the building's watchman.
El guachimán del estacionamiento te cuida el carro por un dólar.
The car-park attendant will watch your car for a dollar.
Pregúntale al guachimán, él sabe a qué hora abren.
Ask the watchman — he knows what time they open.
What It Actually Means
A guachimán is a watchman or security guard: the uniformed one at the door of a building, and equally the man who appears from nowhere to mind your parked car and expects a tip when you return. Venezuela uses it for both, and the word carries no disrespect in either direction — it is simply the name of the job. The feminine guachimana exists but is rare; vigilante is the formal alternative on a payslip.
Where It Comes From
Directly from English watchman, hispanised down to the last syllable — one of the clearest Anglicisms in Caribbean Spanish, and respectable enough to have made it into the dictionary of the Real Academia. The Caribbean and Central America shared the route; in Venezuela the oil industry of the twentieth century, with its American camps and American job titles, gave the word an obvious road in.
How Natives Use It
Constantly, and across the region: Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic all say it, so this is one Venezuelan word you can safely take on tour. It appears in sentences about keys, packages, gates and parking, which in a Venezuelan city means it appears daily. Note the stress and the accent — guachimán, on the last syllable, plural guachimanes.
Common Pitfall
Do not treat it as slang to be avoided in polite company — it is the ordinary word, and swapping in vigilante or agente de seguridad to sound respectful mostly sounds stiff. The real error is spelling: learners who know the English original write watchiman or guachiman without the accent. It is fully naturalised Spanish now, and it is spelled and stressed like one.