Franeleros are people who have as main activity guarding or keeping an eye on cars parked in several streets in certain places in large Mexican cities, getting a tip as a reward, which sometimes is established by them. The term comes from the Spanish word franela, meaning flannel, which is a small piece of soft light fabric (normally washed out red or gray) which they use to wash the cars if they are asked to, or to simply wave it around to give parking indications. Franeleros are sometimes also known as cuida-coches (car keepers) or "viene vienes" (literally "come come"), which is the phrase
Franeleros are people who have as main activity guarding or keeping an eye on cars parked in several streets in certain places in large Mexican cities, getting a tip as a reward, which sometimes is established by them. The term comes from the Spanish word franela, meaning flannel, which is a small piece of soft light fabric (normally washed out red or gray) which they use to wash the cars if they are asked to, or to simply wave it around to give parking indications. Franeleros are sometimes also known as cuida-coches (car keepers) or "viene vienes" (literally "come come"), which is the phrase they commonly say while giving the parking indications. In 2007, due to the criticisms around this controversial "occupation" (mainly extortion, grand theft auto, relation with organized crime and illegal use of public space), this guarding activity became illegal in Mexico City, but it is still widely practiced. In areas where parking meters have been installed, franeleros no longer operate.
A central tenet of franeleros is the implicit threat that they will intentionally destroy or vandalize cars if the owner does not pay them, making the activity a form of extortion. Franeleros will often block empty spaces with trashcans, empty jugs, flowerpots or bricks, and remove them when their "customers" park.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).