INÉS: DISCIPLINE, SURVEILLANCE, AND MOTHERING IN THE MARGINS
My first conversation with Inés occurred over the phone. I was working as morning security personnel at the Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP) her daughter, Araceli, was forced to attend following her removal from a regular public high school in Austin. Araceli arrived to the DAEP that morning wearing “skinny jeans,” a style of jeans that were universally abhorred by DAEP administrators for being “too tight.” She was instantly marked “out of compliance” with the program’s mandatory dress code.
Inés’s name and number was the fourth entry in a long list of parents whose children were out of dress code compliance for the day. My job was to call and inform each parent of their son’s or daughter’s dress code status and request that they bring an appropriate change of clothing to the DAEP.
“It’s the skinny jeans again?” Inés confirmed over the phone with me. I responded “yes” and asked if she could bring a new pair of jeans to the DAEP for her daughter. Cordially, she told me that she was “already at work” but would try to bring jeans to the DAEP during her lunch break. There was nothing distinct or special about my first conversation with Inés. Like most of the other parents I spoke with over the phone that morning, she immediately recognized the DAEP phone number and was not surprised by my request. What made this occasion unique in hindsight was the regularity with which Inés received similar phone calls and requests for her presence at the DAEP over the year and a half that followed.
In total, I spent three years getting to know Araceli and Inés while I worked and collected data at the DAEP as part of a separate research project. It wasn’t until a formal interview in 2013 at Inés’s apartment in the northeastern part of Austin that we had our first interaction outside of the DAEP.
Inés lived in a suburban, nondescript sienna brown apartment complex isolated by freeways and empty Farm to Market roads. The complex was eerily quiet and encircled by a tall metal security fence. Inés has been sharing a small, spartan two bedroom apartment with her 15 year old daughter and husband, Fernando, who is not Araceli’s biological father and has had limited involvement in her upbringing.
Upon entering the apartment I was immediately struck by the security camera Inés had mounted at the top of the wall and aimed at the front doorway. The apartment furnishings were minimalist; there was a plain brown sofa set and television in the living room and a wooden dining table in the adjacent kitchen nook. The walls were decorated with several multi-picture frames and photographs that depict joyous events from the family’s past. Inés guided me to images from a trip to Disney World she took with Araceli and her sister-in-law’s family. In one photograph Araceli was hugging her cousins and in another she posed happily next to Disney characters.