Castañeda was born in La Paloma, Mexico in the state of Michoacán. As a young man he made his way to Mexico City in order to participate in the country’s more contemporary artistic culture. In 1958 he entered La Esmeralda Painting and Sculpture Academy of the National Institute of Fine Arts and began to develop a distinctive style in his approach to sculpture. He finished his studies in 1963 and worked hard to achieve his first major one-man show in 1970. Since these initial successes, Castañeda has been exhibited and recognized in his native Mexico and around the world. His commissioned public sculptures are placed in a number of Mexican cities as well as Palm Springs, California. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Museum of Art History in Cuidad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, among many others. He has received numerous honors including one from UNICEF in 1980, from Israel in 1996, and from the International Academy of Modern Art in Rome in 1998.