Carmen Jiménez is a merengue singer, composer and producer who records under the name La Caribeña and bills herself as la Show Woman del Merengue. She founded Merenchata, which is both her label and her name for the merengue-and-bachata fusion she works in.

Two islands and a third city

Her father is from Loíza, on the Puerto Rican coast; her mother is from San José de las Matas, in the Dominican Cibao. She was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in New York, which makes her a Caribbean of the kind the twentieth century produced in large numbers and the record industry has never known where to file.

She has settled it herself by naming the album after it. Caribeña Soy is written and sung by her and is explicitly about the beauty of both islands — a title that refuses to choose, from a woman who has been asked to choose all her life.

Recording in Santiago

Caribeña Soy is her fourth album. It came out in October 2023, cut in Santiago de los Caballeros and produced by her own Merenchata, and it was formally launched in the Dominican Republic the following July. Pasión followed in January 2025.

Carnaval, Feliz Navidad, No Sufras Como Yo, Fue Por Interés and a merengue reading of Imagine are among the singles. The voice is trained — she is filed as a mezzo-soprano in the classical directories — and that is audible in merengue, where most singing is done by ear and at volume.

Running the label

Merenchata is not a vanity imprint. She writes, produces and releases through it, and the Dominican press treats its announcements as news. Owning the company that puts out your own records is rare for a woman in merengue and rarer still for one who did not come up inside a Dominican orchestra.

Dominican outlets introduce her as la doctora y cantante — she holds a doctorate as well as a career — and as an educator and a businesswoman. The singing is one of several things she does properly.