Diasporic Community Knowledge and School Absenteeism

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 México 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. Keywords: diasporic community knowledgeMexican immigrantsschool absenteeismtransnationalism Notes 1 Pueblo literally means 'town' in Spanish; however, it also means 'people'. In this context, pueblo means town and people, or the community of origin and people of this research study. It is important to mention that we also use the word pueblo purposefully to denote – as Bonfil Batalla (1987) states – the people of Mexico profundo, those who are the modern bearers of Mesoamerican indigenous cultural practices, but who may or may not self-identify as indigenous. 2'Whitestream schools' 'refers to all schools from kindergarten through graduate school and to the official and unofficial texts used in US schools that are founded on the practices, principles, morals, and values of white supremacy and highlight the history of White Anglo-American culture. Whitestream indoctrination or the teaching (either formally or informally) that white supremacy is normal in whitestream schools is not exclusively the work of Whites. Any person, including people of color, actively promoting or upholding white models as the goal or standard is also involved in whitestreaming' (Urrieta Citation2009: 181).