Introduction Early on June 4, 1989, the Chinese army regained control of Tiananmen Square in the People's Republic of China. The military used violence and extreme force to clear the streets and clear the square of students who had demonstrated there two months earlier. It is estimated that between 300 and 2,500 protesters were killed by troops that night and many thousands were injured (Vogel 2011). The student-led protest represented a watershed moment in the history of Chinese protest, because never before had a movement gained so much momentum and support from various groups in Chinese society. The effect was felt throughout China and there were also many demonstrations of support for the movement in 132 cities across the country (Tong 1998). It was the evening of October 2, 1968 when the students of Mexico City gathered at the Hall of the Three Cultures Plaza of the Tlatelolco residential complex to decide what measures to take against the government's efforts to repress the student movement. A few days earlier the military had seized the installations of the National University and the National Polytechnic without any resistance. All of these events were taking place just 10 days before the opening ceremony of the 1968 Olympics scheduled for Mexico. As the students decided on the movement's next steps, the Mexican army arrived to arrest the movement's leaders. An unidentified person fired shots and the ensuing shootout lasted more than two hours. The number of civilian victims varies between four and three thousand people (NPR 2008). In this article I will compare the Tiananmen and Tlatelolco student movements in their differences and similarities. The argument is that both the Mexican and Chinese governments used the military to... .... middle of paper ......2-24.Johnston, Hank. State violence and opposition protest in high-capacity authoritarian regimes. International Journal of Conflict and Violence. Vol.6 2012. Pages 55-74Mendoza, Arturo. 2011. La Tortura en el Marco de la Guerra Sucia en Mexico: un Ejercicio de Memoria Colectiva. Polis 2011, vol. 7 page 139-179Mulvenon, James, Yang, Andrew. The People's Liberation Army as an organization. Reference Volume 1.0 RAND National Research Division. 2002. Page 2-10.NPR. 01 December 2008. Massacre in Mexico of 1968: what really happened? Accessed May 24, 2014. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97546687Tong, James. 1998. The 1989 democracy movement in China: a spatial analysis of citizen participation. Asian survey. Vol.38 Page 327Vogel, Ezra. 2011. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Page. 211.