‘Come and See the Blood on the Streets’: Cinematic Representation of Student Activism in India and Mexico

Abstract

From a cultural-historical perspective, Mexico and India share several features. Both countries boast of a millenarian culture, a vast geographically variegated territory, a highly stratified social fabric and colonially mediated modernity. But one thing for which the two nations pride themselves the most is their democratic polity. Mexico was spared the tortuous military dictatorships that spawned over most Latin American nations in the twentieth century and was able to consolidate its civil rule after the Mexican revolution of 1916. In a similar vein, India, unlike some of her neighbours, developed into one of the largest democracies of the world after a successful anticolonial struggle that had culminated in her independence in August 1947. And yet, both nations have scarred their democratic credentials with instances of state repression and if in the case of India, one of the biggest scars is that of the ‘Emergency’ that was proclaimed in 1975, in Mexico it is the state terror unleashed against students resistance in the summer of 1968 leading to the massacre of students in Mexico City on 2 October 1968. Many believe the students’ massacre hastened the end of decades of authoritarian rule in Mexico. Popular support for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), 2 steadily declined after the incident. Its 71-year grip on power ended with the election of President Vicente Fox in 2000