Short answer: A yonke is a junkyard. The word comes from the English "junker", and the Diccionario de americanismos records it, spelled yonque, for the southwestern United States and Mexico. Deshuesadero means the same thing in Mexico and Colombia. Junker and yónquer are the forms recorded for Puerto Rico and the northeastern United States. Huesario, yunque and chatarrera are not in that dictionary with this meaning.
Last checked: September 29, 2026. Definitions and regions are from the Diccionario de americanismos of the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, at asale.org/damer. Counts of yard names are from the 3,606 published listings in our directory.
What does each word mean, and where is it used?
| Word | Meaning in the dictionary | Region the dictionary gives |
|---|---|---|
| yonque (written yonke on the street) | A place where cars that no longer work are left to be dismantled for reusable parts | Southwestern United States, Mexico |
| yónquer, yónker | A house, stall or place that sells used parts for vehicles | Northeastern United States, Honduras, Puerto Rico |
| junker | A seller of used vehicle parts | Puerto Rico |
| deshuesadero | A car graveyard | Mexico, Colombia |
| huesera | A shop that sells used parts for cars and other machines | Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica |
| desarmadero | A place that stores or buys unusable vehicles to take apart and sell the parts | Argentina, Uruguay |
| desarmaduría | A place where machines, mainly vehicles, are taken apart | Chile |
| rastro | An open lot where used mechanical parts and scrap are sold | Panama |
The dictionary was published in 2010 and records where the academies documented each word. People move, and words move with them, so you will hear yonke in Chicago and deshuesadero in Texas. The table tells you where a word is at home, not where it stops.
Is it yonke or yonque?
The dictionary spells it yonque, following Spanish spelling rules. Yonke, with a k, is the spelling people type and the one painted on walls, and it is far more common in searches. The dictionary has no entry for yonke. Both are the same word and both come from the English "junker", which the dictionary glosses as scrap or an old machine.
From the noun come the everyday phrases: "carros para yonke" are cars sold for scrap, and a car that is "yonqueado" is one that no longer runs. The dictionary records yonqueado for Puerto Rico.
What about huesario, yunque and chatarrera?
These three show up in searches, and we could not find any of them in the Diccionario de americanismos with the meaning of a junkyard.
Huesario is not in the dictionary at all. The recorded word is huesera, and it belongs to Central America. Both are built on hueso, bone, the same picture behind deshuesadero and the English "boneyard": a car stripped to its bones.
Yunque is the Spanish word for an anvil. As a word for a junkyard it looks like yonque written by ear. If someone tells you to go to the yunque for a door, they mean the yonke.
Chatarrera is not in the dictionary either. Chatarra is the ordinary Spanish word for scrap metal, and among Spanish speakers in the United States a chatarrera is commonly a scrap yard that buys metal by weight. That matters in practice, because a scrap yard will buy your car but usually will not sell you a part off one.
Do yards in the United States use these words in their names?
Almost never. We searched the names of the 3,606 yards in our directory.
| Word in the business name | Yards |
|---|---|
| yonke or yonque | 0 |
| deshuesadero, huesario or chatarra | 0 |
| rastro | 4, all in Miami-Dade County, Florida |
| salvage | 716 |
| auto parts | 705 |
| recycling | 686 |
| wrecking | 106 |
The four are Rastro MR Used Auto Parts and its two sister yards in Opa-locka, and Rastro 74 Used Truck Parts in Medley. The dictionary ties rastro to Panama, so its use in South Florida is something we can show from business names but cannot source to a dictionary.
The lesson for a reader is simple. People say yonke, but the sign says "auto salvage" or "used auto parts". If you search a map for yonke and get few results, search in English for the same thing.
A day looking for parts at a yonke, from the 1028 El Terco channel, published June 2020. It is in Spanish.
