Pick up just about any newspaper in Mexico these days and the chances are that reports of crime, particularly drugs-related crime, will be splashed all over the front pages.

Stories of kidnappings have become commonplace, the slaying of police officers caught up in the narcotics trade seems to be an almost everyday occurence and, last year, levels of violence appeared to reach new highs when the press confirmed that severed heads were washed up on the beaches of Acapulco, one of Mexico’s best-known beach resorts.