Deficit perspectives often portray Mexican parents as not caring or uninvolved in their children's education in US schools. Although school truancy mostly affects schools in terms of school funding issues, high Latina/o school absenteeism is often blamed on lack of parental involvement. This study explores parents' and grandparents' perspectives about why going to Nocutzepo in Mexico was important for their children and grandchildren's cultural identities, even when their children were truant from US schools. We define diasporic community knowledge as ways of knowing and ways of being that include a broad range of practices inherited by community members as repertoires of practices. Using a transnational ethnography, we draw from data gathered both during the patron saint's fiesta in Mexico and/or during home visits in Los Angeles between 2006 and 2009. We conclude that people from Nocutzepo actively engage in alternative educational practices that supplement US schooling. Through pueblo visits, parents and grandparents were actively and meaningfully teaching their children and grandchildren ancestral diasporic community knowledge. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Transnationalism Mexican immigrants school absenteeism diasporic community knowledge

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