Mass beheadings in Acapulco and almost 100 gangland-style killings since the start of 2011 underline the daunting challenges in the fifth year of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's drug war.
The violence hit a new high in 2010 with more than 12,000 deaths blamed on fighting between gang members and with some of the tens of thousands of soldiers deployed under the Calderon administration.
Analysts warned that the current rate of some 1000 murders per month was set to continue at least in the short term, particularly as gangsters seek to influence several key state elections this year and 2012 presidential polls.
"The cartels would previously kill a local policeman in order to send a signal to the director of police, but now they go after the director of police or the mayor," Alejandro Schtulmann, from political risk consulting firm EMPRA, told AFP. Two small-town mayors have already been killed this year.
The government lauded a string of drugs hauls and the deaths or arrests of around half of 37 top gang leaders in the past two years as signs of success for the controversial clampdown launched when Calderon took office in 2006.
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More than 30,000 people have been killed since then by organised crime, according to official figures.
Although authorities acknowledge the record levels of violence, they say it demonstrates the desperation of the gangs.
"The criminal organisations are weakening like never before," government security spokesman Alejandro Poire said on Monday.
But many observers warn of further mayhem as gang members turn to other crimes, such as kidnapping and extortion, to boost their incomes.
"As cartels get more desperate, they will fight to the death to protect their interests," Schtulmann said.
The worst-hit areas include Chihuahua state, which includes Mexico's most violent city Ciudad Juarez, and Guerrero, home to the beach resort city of Acapulco, where 15 decapitated bodies were found outsidea shopping centre last weekend.
Sociologist Fernando Escalante lauded Calderon's efforts to reform the notoriously corrupt police - set to eventually take over from the army - but said the firings of hundreds of officers last year led to dangerous short-term power vacuums.
"The crisis at a local level is the decisive factor to explain the country's levels of violence," Escalante said in a recent article in Nexos magazine.
The government last year took small steps with social programs to try to improve public health and education in poor communities, including Ciudad Juarez.
But critics said the efforts were too little, too late, and face an uphill struggle given the relentless violence and endemic corruption.
The failure of local, state and federal authorities to work together also presents a major obstacle.
"They're not able to create political decisions and moves so that institutions will fully reform," said Ernesto Lopez Portillo, director of the INSYDE think tank on security and democracy.
"It's important to understand the limits for the country's president."
Meanwhile, US Senator John Kerry said on Tuesday that the United States - the number one market for Mexico-trafficked drugs - would look at increasing its anti-drug assistance, which currently includes the three-year, $US1.3 billion ($A1.32 billion) Merida Initiative, already set to be extended this year.
"We're going to look very carefully at whether there is more that we're able to do because this is a national security threat to the United States," the Democratic senator said in Washington.
In the latest attempt to increase public solidarity against the violence, Mexican cartoonists this week launched a poster campaign entitled "No more blood."
