was born on 25 November 1891 in Havana. His paternal grandfather, Antonio Castellanos, a Cantonese farmer, arrived in Cuba during the second half of the nineteenth century to work with the Castellanos family in Güines. His maternal grandmother was Mexican, while both his mother, Gerónima Francisca González, and his father, Agustín Castellanos y Castellanos, a tinsmith, were Cuban-born. Therefore, due to his East Asian, Mexican, and Cuban-born roots, Castellanos could be considered a mestizo or mixed Cuban.
Castellanos received his elementary and secondary education at the Colegio Redentor (Redeemer College) and Academia de San Anacleto (San Anacleto Academy) in Havana. By the time he began high school, in May 1914, at Instituto número 1 (Institute number 1) in Havana, he already had an interest in criminology. It was in 1908 during his father s birthday party that a guest chronicled a criminal act and mentioned the theories of ...