Ramón Torres — Francisco Pache Torres, born in Higüey on 18 July 1949 — is a Dominican singer-songwriter known as El Poeta, a bachatero whose career runs from the years of «Radio Guarachita» into the 2020s. He has written more than four hundred songs, many of them built around a story rather than a plain lament, and «Tus cartas llegan» is the one most often sung back to him.

From Higüey

He is the son of Ruperto Pache and Catalina Torres, both from Higüey. He worked as a day labourer from about the age of ten, which meant finishing his schooling at night, and before music he earned a living in farming and tobacco and later in a free-trade-zone factory in Higüey. When he lost that job he moved to Santo Domingo — in the late 1980s, according to most accounts. He later turned the move into a song, «De Higüey a la capital», recorded in 1993.

«Radio Guarachita»

In the capital he came to Radhamés Aracena, whose label and station recorded his first single, «Las estrellas brillarán». The song caught on, and a Guarachita broadcast taped in June 1987 already has it on air, credited to Ramón Torres y su trío. More hits came from that period: «La segunda carta», «Contigo hasta el final», «Mi gran secreto», «Para qué sirven las palabras», «Eres mía». He became one of the most played voices on the station, although, by the accounts that circulate about those years, the records did not bring him fair pay.

El Poeta

The nickname comes from his lyrics, which use figures of speech uncommon in bachata and tend to tell a story: a woman who leaves by yola, letters from abroad that grow colder, a lover who prospers and comes back to introduce her new husband — the situations behind «Tus cartas llegan», «La travesía» and «Ya volvió». He is also credited with bringing piano and accordion into bachata arrangements, and is counted among the forerunners of modern bachata. Torres himself has played the name down: a poet, he once told a visitor, is something too grand, and he is just a bachatero.

Records

His albums include «Amor con delicadeza» (1990), «Yo la hice mujer» (1994), «Mi San Juan» and «El rey del bachateo» (2002), «Si hubiese muerto ayer» and «Entre ayer y hoy» (2014), «Café con leche» (2015) and «Mi bachata legendaria» (2020). In 2014 he was on the first roster of the company Luigui Bleand set up in New York. The guitarist Mártires de León, whom Torres had put on a record while still a teenager and with whom he cut «Lo que pasó, pasó», went on to become the musical architect of Monchy & Alexandra, and returned to produce Torres’s tenth studio album, «Tilolalá», released on 1 April 2022: fourteen songs, all written by Torres. The title track is a tribute to Tilolalá, a popular singer of the last century, and its video, shot at the Monument in Santiago, was the first music video of his career.

Stages

In December 2019 Romeo Santos called him on stage at the La Romana date of his «Gira de Pueblo», at the Estadio Francisco A. Micheli, and the two sang «Tus cartas llegan». In November 2022 he was billed as one of the legends of the «ADN Bachata World Festival» in Puerto Plata, where he sang «Lo que pasó, pasó» and «Ya volvió», and in July 2026 the Dominican Senate honoured his career in a ceremony at the National Congress.

Legacy

Torres belongs to the generation that sang bachata before it brought money or prestige, alongside Luis Segura, Blas Durán, Ramón Cordero and Teodoro Reyes, and he carried the stories of the rural east into the genre. In February 2026 the writer Juan Hernández Inirio argued in «Acento» that he should receive El Gran Soberano, as Luis Segura had, and put the case in terms of a legend recognised by the public long before the institutions.