Based on research carried out in Oaxaca City, Mexico, this paper centers on the childhoods experienced by a group of displaced children from San Agustín Loxicha in the Sierra Madre del Sur region of Oaxaca state. In 1996, police and military units swept through the region and arrested 150 men, accusing them of belonging to the Popular Revolutionary Army (Ejército Popular Revolucionario, or EPR). In 1997, claiming the innocence of their husbands, brothers, fathers and uncles, the women and children of Loxicha set up a protest camp in Oaxaca City’s Zócalo (central plaza) where they remained for four and half years.

The children of Loxicha have played a key role in their community’s struggle—going on marches, and participating in sit-ins and hunger strikes. They also play, work and go to school. However, among the residents and within the press of Oaxaca City they are perceived as being subsumed in an adult struggle, and portrayed only as innocent victims of political violence, displacement and social marginalization.

Drawing on current debates around childhood and participation, as encapsulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this paper explores the multilayered nature of the Loxicha children’s daily lives and the ways in which they challenge normative notions of childhood as well as the “rules” of children’s participation.