Tiananmen Square Massacre and Tlatelolco Massacre: A comparative analysis of Mexican and Chinese military intervention against students’ protests.

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Introduction In early June 4, 1989 the Chinese military regained control of Tiananmen Square in the People’s Republic of China. The military used violence and extreme force to clear the streets and liberate the Square from the students who had held demonstrations there since two month before. Estimations say that between 300 and 2500 protesters were killed by troops during that night, and many thousands wounded (Vogel 2011). The student led protest was a watershed in Chinese protest history, because never before a movement had gain so much momentum and support from various groups in Chinese society. The effect was felt around China and there were also many demonstrations of support for the movement in as many as 132 cities in the country (Tong 1998). It was the evening of October 2, 1968 when students in Mexico City gathered at the Three Cultures Square in the Tlatelolco housing complex to decide what steps to take against the government’s efforts to suppress the students’ movement. Just days before the military had seized the installations of the National University, and the National Polytechnic Institute without any resistance. All these events were developing only 10 days before the 1968 Olympics inauguration ceremony set to take place in Mexico. As students decided the movement’s next steps, the Mexican army arrived to arrest the movement’s leaders. An unidentified party fired shots, and the shooting that followed lasted more than two hours. The numbers of civilian casualties range between four and three thousand people (NPR 2008). In this paper I will compare both the Tiananmen and Tlatelolco student movements in their differences and similarities The thesis is that both the Mexican and Chinese governments used military fo... ... middle of paper ... ...2-24. Johnston, Hank. State Violence and Oppositional Protest in High-Capacity Authoritarian Regimes. International Journal of Conflict and Violence. Vol.6 2012. Pag. 55-74 Mendoza, Arturo. 2011. La Tortura en el Marco de la Guerra Sucia en Mexico: un Ejercicio de Memoria Colectiva. Polis 2011, Vol. 7 Pag. 139-179 Mulvenon, James, Yang, Andrew. The People’s Liberation Army as Organization. Reference Volume 1.0 RAND National Research Division. 2002. Pag 2-10. NPR. Dec. 01, 2008. Mexico’s 1968 Massacre: What Really Happened? Visited on May 24, 2014. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97546687 Tong, James. 1998. The 1989 Democracy Movement in China: A Spatial Analysis of City Participation. Asian Survey. Vol.38 Pag. 327 Vogel, Ezra. 2011. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pag. 211.

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