Carlos Alman is the search name commonly used for Carlos Almánzar, Cardi B’s Dominican father and a former New York cab driver. Established reporting generally spells his surname Almanzar or Almánzar, and Cardi B identified him in a 2020 statement as Carlos Julio Almanzar. “Carlos Alman” should therefore be understood as a commonly used search variation rather than a confirmed legal name.
Unlike his famous daughter, Carlos has not built a public career around celebrity. Most reliable information about him comes from Cardi B’s own comments, contemporary reporting about her early life, and a small number of documented public appearances. That record shows a Dominican immigrant who worked in New York, raised a family with Clara Almánzar, and remained closely connected to his daughters while largely staying outside the entertainment spotlight.
Need to know
- Carlos Almánzar is Cardi B’s father and is of Dominican background.
- Cardi B has said he came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1990.
- He worked for years as a New York cab driver; Cardi later said the period lasted nine years.
- Carlos and Clara Almánzar are documented as the parents of Cardi B and Hennessy Carolina.
- The latest strong independently documented public appearance located was on September 13, 2025, when Reuters photographed Carlos arriving with Cardi B at an event in Washington Heights.
Carlos Alman profile summary
| Detail | Verified information |
|---|---|
| Name used by established sources | Carlos Almánzar / Carlos Almanzar |
| Fuller name used by Cardi B | Carlos Julio Almanzar |
| Known for | Being Cardi B’s father |
| Background | Dominican |
| Documented work | New York cab driver |
| Children with Clara Almánzar | Cardi B and Hennessy Carolina |
| Latest strong public appearance located | September 13, 2025, Washington Heights, New York |
Dominican background and move to New York
Carlos is Dominican. In The FADER’s 2016 profile of Cardi B, Cardi was described as the daughter of a Dominican father and Trinidadian mother, placing Carlos within the Caribbean family background that shaped her upbringing in New York.
Cardi later said that her father came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1990. That account was preserved in Hot 97’s report on her 2020 comments about him, where she identified him as Carlos Julio Almanzar.
The available record does not securely establish his exact birthplace within the Dominican Republic, so it is more accurate to describe him simply as Dominican rather than attach a city or province that has not been independently verified.
Carlos’s New York connection became important not because he pursued fame himself, but because his family life spanned the South Bronx and Washington Heights. Those neighborhoods became part of Cardi B’s own public story, especially her connection to Dominican New York.
His years as a New York cab driver
Carlos’s clearest documented career is taxi driving.
When The FADER profiled Cardi B in 2016, her father was still working as a cab driver and wanted to leave the job. Cardi was considering buying a bodega that could provide another source of work and income for her family. The detail is significant because it captures Carlos before his daughter’s success had fully transformed the family’s circumstances.
A year later, The FADER’s 2017 follow-up added another revealing detail. After the bodega plan was abandoned, Cardi offered her father an allowance. According to the profile, he rejected the idea and instead wanted her to help him find work.
Cardi later said that Carlos had driven a cab for nine years. Because that figure comes from her account rather than employment or licensing records, it is best treated as her description of his career rather than as a precisely documented employment timeline.
Later reporting, including PEOPLE’s profile of Cardi B’s parents, describes Carlos as having retired from cab driving. An exact retirement date has not been firmly established.
His connection to that line of work apparently continued even after he stopped driving. Cardi said in 2019 that her father still spoke up for cab drivers and the pressures they faced. That does not establish a formal advocacy role, but it suggests taxi work remained personally important to him.
Family life with Clara Almánzar
Carlos and Clara Almánzar are documented as the parents of Cardi B, born Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, and her younger sister Hennessy Carolina.
Cardi has said that her parents separated when she was 13. Reliable reporting does not firmly establish the precise date of their marriage or legal divorce, so those details should not be treated as settled facts.
Online biographies often claim Carlos has eight children in total, including six from another relationship. That figure is repeated widely, but the strongest available sources do not adequately verify the complete family count. The responsible conclusion is narrower: Carlos and Clara are reliably documented as the parents of Cardi B and Hennessy Carolina.
That distinction matters because Carlos is a comparatively private person. Public interest in Cardi B does not automatically make every alleged relative or family detail suitable for publication.
What Cardi B has said about her father
Some of the clearest glimpses of Carlos come through his daughter’s own comments.
In a Father’s Day post cited by PEOPLE, Cardi described herself and her father as “personality twins” and said they shared a taste for jokes. It is a small but useful detail because it comes from Cardi herself rather than from outsiders assigning Carlos a personality.
She has also connected him to food memories, including eating tomatoes with salt and later discussing mondongo, a dish associated with Caribbean and Latin American cooking.
After Cardi gave birth to her daughter Kulture in 2018, she said her father was helping her by running errands in New York. Those comments show that Carlos remained involved in her life after she became internationally famous, even though he rarely appeared publicly on his own.
His preference for privacy became especially visible in 2019. When a television reporter unexpectedly filmed or approached him, Cardi objected publicly. Nylon’s account of the incident reported that she emphasized that her father did not have the security protection she did and should not be exposed to unwanted attention.
That moment helps explain why reliable information about Carlos remains relatively limited: his connection to a celebrity has not translated into a comparable public career of his own.
Public appearances with Cardi B
Carlos has nevertheless appeared with his daughter at selected public events.
He was photographed at Cardi B’s Gold Album release party in New York on April 10, 2018, one of the clearer early images of father and daughter together after her rise to mainstream fame.
A more recent appearance came on September 13, 2025, when Reuters photographed Carlos Almanzar arriving with Cardi B at a bodega pop-up in Washington Heights. Reuters photographer Adam Gray identified him directly in the caption as her father.
As of September 15, 2026, that remains the latest strong independently documented public appearance located in the available reporting. It should not be described as his last appearance ever, only as the latest one firmly established in the record reviewed for this profile.
What is not reliably known about Carlos Alman
Several details frequently attached to Carlos online are much less certain than they appear.
A March 19, 1958 birth date is repeated across numerous biography sites, but no authoritative birth record or direct family confirmation was found to support it. Because the date itself remains unverified, any age calculated from it should also be treated as unconfirmed.
The same caution applies to claims about his exact legal full name. Cardi used Carlos Julio Almanzar, while some weaker online profiles use Carlos Alberto Almánzar Marsan without providing a primary record. The strongest approach is to use Carlos Almánzar or Carlos Almanzar and attribute the fuller “Carlos Julio” form specifically to Cardi.
There is also no credible public evidence supporting a precise personal net-worth figure. Cardi B’s financial success cannot be used as a proxy for her father’s wealth, and taxi income, family property or speculative assets cannot responsibly be added together into an estimate.
Other online details—including exact height, weight, religion, present residence and current relationship status—are either unsupported, private or irrelevant to understanding his public role.
Conclusion
Carlos Almánzar is known publicly because he is Cardi B’s father, but the most credible parts of his story stand apart from celebrity mythology: Dominican roots, migration to the United States, years spent driving a New York cab, and a continuing family connection that has occasionally surfaced alongside his daughter’s public life.
The evidence also shows why a careful profile of Carlos should remain proportionate. His work history and relationship to Cardi B are well documented; many of the precise personal details repeated elsewhere are not. That makes the clearest picture of Carlos Alman a relatively simple one: a former New York cab driver, Dominican father of Cardi B and Hennessy Carolina, and a family figure who has generally remained outside the spotlight.
