Arcadio Castillo Díaz was born on the 22nd of Gwiblonii (Month of October) in the city of Columbus, and is Guna. His childhood was spent in the forests and sea of the Guna Yala archipelago.

In the 1980s he conducted his university studies at the Technological Institute of Higher Studies of the Fisheries Industry and Economy of Astrajan, in the former Soviet Union-Russia, obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Ichthyology and Fish Culture and a Master’s Degree in Biological Sciences,

He worked as a scientific assistant at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s (STRI) Marine Research Station from 1993 to July 2019. He currently advises the Guna General Congress (CGG) on coastal-marine resources. In 2004 he organized and was a founding member of the Center for Environmental and Human Development (CENDAH). In 2018, he was chosen as the Coordinator of the Alliance of Small Scale Indigenous Fishermen of Central America.

Currently he supports the Project ‘Monitoring the Marine Megafauna and LionFish in the Guna Yala Comarca’, in conjunction with MarAlliance and the Center for Environmental and Human Development (CENDAH), in the Guna Yala Comarca, Panama.