Jorge Castellanos was an author and professor born in 1915 in Guantánamo, Cuba.

After graduating from the University of Havana in 1940 with a doctorate in philosophy and letters, Castellanos worked as a professor of history and literature at the Institute of Secondary Education in Santiago de Cuba and the University of Oriente.

Castellanos had been associated with the Popular Socialist Party, Cuba’s communist party, during his early career, but eventually shifted his political leanings toward that of the Christian Democrats by the 1950s. He also came to oppose the dictatorial rule of Fulgencio Batista during this period.

Exiled to the United States by way of Jamaica in 1961, Castellanos was working as a history professor at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan, by 1962. He retired in Miami in 1987, but continued to publish books on Cuban culture, most notably his series Cultura Afrocubana, co-authored with his daughter Isabel Castellanos, from 1988 to 1994.