More than 1,400 gangland killings were clocked, by one newspaper's count, giving April the highest death toll of the 53 months since President Felipe Calderon unleashed the military and federal police against the country's crime syndicates. The toll includes more than 300 bodies pulled from mass graves near the South Texas border and in other northern Mexican states.

Many of the graves' victims were killed weeks, even months earlier. Still, nearly 40 people a day were slain last month, according to Milenio, the newspaper that tallied the 1,402 deaths. In April's last week alone, gunmen abducted 11 city police officers, including the force's chief, in a Monterrey suburb.

And security forces seized an arsenal from a residential basement in Ciudad Juarez, bordering El Paso, that included at least one weapon capable of downing aircraft.

"We're in this mammoth, huge trauma, and everybody is demanding it must be solved," Vicente Fox, Calderon's predecessor, told a luncheon crowd of Houston business and community leaders this week. "We are indeed in trouble now in Mexico."

As the crackdown slogs into a fifth year and the body count ticks toward 40,000, opinion polls suggest a growing legion of Mexicans share Fox's frustration. Thousands of Mexicans are expected to march Sunday in Mexico City and elsewhere to demand an end to the violence.

Victim's father to lead

Led by poet Javier Sicilia - whose son was among seven presumed innocents murdered together in early April by suspected gangsters - the protesters will call for a still-vague national pact that they hope will bring peace with justice.

Sicilia and followers will start marching today on the 50-mile hike from his hometown of Cuernavaca to Mexico City. "Enough already!" the protesters will chant, as they have in previous marches. "We are damned sick of this!"

Though he's from Calderon's own conservative political party, Fox has been vocal in calling for returning the army to its bases and stealing the profit incentive from the gangsters by legalizing narcotics. Calderon's U.S.-supported war with the narcotics gangs is the "last frontier of prohibition," Fox argues.

"Prohibitions don't work," Fox said in Houston on Tuesday. "The army is not prepared for police work."

Countering their critics, Calderon and his senior aides argue that the army must stay in the streets until less-corrupt and better-trained police, prosecutors and judges can go toe to toe with the gangsters.

"The 'enough already' should be directed at the criminals," Alejandro Poire, the government's national security spokesman, told reporters Tuesday. "Justice won't give up, won't back off, until all those responsible pay their debt with society."

Documentary in Houston

Houstonians wanting a glimpse of just how bad the violence is - and how frustrated many Mexicans are with its endurance - can view 8 Murders a Day, a documentary about the gangster violence in Ciudad Juarez. The film opens Friday at the AMC Studio 30 in southwest Houston.

More than 8,000 people have been killed in Juarez in little more than three years, as two major crime syndicates and their local street gang allies battle for control of the narcotics trade there.

Though Juarez's bloodshed is down slightly in recent months, the city of about 1.2 million remains one of the most murderous corners of the world.

The state of Chihuahua suffered 374 homicides last month, most of them in Juarez, according to Milenio.

"Juarez pretty much symbolizes the violence in the whole country," said Charlie Minn, who produced and directed the film. "I just can't get over the body count."

'Murderous competition'

Determining which killings are linked to organized crime is often more an art than a science. Milenio's tally has not been confirmed by the Mexican government. But such media counts in recent years have proved to be low when the government later released its own figures.

Government officials argue the violence primarily is between gangland rivals, though civilians have increasingly fallen victim to both criminals and security forces.

"It is the murderous competition between the criminals that detonates the violence," said Poire. "And ending the violence comes by weakening these organizations, not by allowing them to act with impunity."

As they long have been, the killings tallied in April were mostly concentrated in a handful of states on the U.S. border and in the Pacific coast states of Guerrero and Sinaloa, Milenio reported.

Chronicle reporter Dane Schiller contributed to this story from Houston.

dudley.althaus@chron.com