Jochy Hernández —full name Carlos José Hernández Díaz, born in San Cristóbal on 12 September 1963, died in Santo Domingo on 30 April 1994— was a Dominican merengue singer known as «El Amiguito», whose brief career was framed by two tragedies: an accident that killed several of his musicians, and the brain tumor that eventually took his own life.

An unsolved murder

He was orphaned at eleven when his father, Bartolo Hernández, was shot and killed on 5 October 1974, a murder that was never solved. As a teenager he began singing with several bands before landing a spot in a merengue orchestra led at different times by Alex Bueno and Aníbal Bravo.

«Ahora Yo» and a night in Bonao

In 1985 he went solo, signing with Discos CBS and releasing his debut single, «Ahora Yo». On 16 August 1987, after a concert in the Cibao, a minibus carrying part of his orchestra collided with a truck in Bonao; Hernández and his brother Ruddy, traveling in a separate vehicle, arrived to find three musicians already dead, while the singer Delvi, who had survived the initial crash, was struck and killed moments later by an oncoming vehicle.

«El Amiguito»

His 1988 album gave him the nickname that stayed with him for the rest of his career, including the song «Hermanos Míos», dedicated to the musicians killed at Bonao.

Legacy

In 1989 Hernández was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and given two months to live, but survived five more years, eventually receiving surgery in Boston after his brother, San Cristóbal senator Tito Hernández, brought his condition to the attention of President Joaquín Balaguer. He died at the Centro Médico UCE in Santo Domingo at thirty. He was married to television reporter and actress María del Carmen Hernández, with whom he had three children, including a son, José Carlos, himself a rock musician, who was murdered in Santo Domingo in 2012, and a daughter, Cindy Marie.