His father also founded and directed the El Paso Job Corps Center in El Paso, Texas, which was renamed the David L. Carrasco Job Corps Center in 1991[4] The younger Carrasco received his BA at Western Maryland College with a major in English Literature, and attended the University of Chicago, where he earned three degrees in nine years: a Master of Theology, MA in History of Religions, and a Ph.D in the History of Religions.

In 1978, Carrasco was invited by the Mexican archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma to participate in the interpretation of the discoveries made at the excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City.

He is the co-producer (along with Jose Cuellar and Alberto Camarillo) of Robert M. Young’s Award Winning Alambrista: Director’s Cut which has been included in The Criterion Collection which specializes in licensing and selling “important classic and contemporary films.” His co-edited (with Nicholas J. Cull) 2004 book, Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants, was named a Southwest Book of the Year by the Tucson-Pima County Public Library.

He also examined the problem in the emerging Chicano Studies fields of scholarship which claimed to be rooted, in part, in the oro del barrio – the oral traditions and daily lives of Mexican American communities in the US.

Where were the shrines, home altars, miracles, symbols of saints, Jesus, curanderos and espiritistas and La Virgen de Guadalupe, among other expressions of Chicano religiosity?

While at Harvard, Carrasco became associated with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and was introduced to the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan #2 through the generosity of the Mexican philanthropist Angeles Espinosa Yglesias.

Carrasco organized a 15-person scholarly team in a 5-year analysis of this early 16th-century codex/mapa resulting in the award-winning book, co-edited with Scott Sessions, Cave, City and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan #2 which was translated into Spanish in 2010.

[16] The organizer during this epoch of Eranos Tagungen was the social philosopher Tilo Schabert who invited Carrasco to speak at conferences on the themes of ‘Guilt – Schuld – La Colpa – La Culpabilité”, 1996, ‘The Language of Masks – Die Sprache der Masken – Il Linguaggio delle Maschere – Le Language des Masques, 1998 and ‘Religions – the religious experience / Religionen – die religiöse Erfahrung / Religions – l'expérience religieuse / Religioni – l'esperienza religiosa” 2004.

[17] Carrasco worked closely with the writer Toni Morrison and escorted her to Mexico City on two occasions to visit archaeological sites, Frida Kahlo's home, and to meet Gabriel García Márquez.

Carrasco was the prime mover in publishing one of Morrison’s final works while she was alive, Goodness and the Literary Imagination, co-edited with Stephanie Paulsell and Mara Willard.