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The mass candlelight protests were a challenge to the government of President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting crime a priority and deployed in addition than 25,000 soldiers and federal police to wrest territory from powerful drug cartels.

Cries of “enough” and “far-seeing live Mexico” rose up from the deep of white-clad demonstrators filling Mexico City’s enormous Zocalo square. The protesters held candles time of a wink in the darkness as they sang the general anthem before dispersing.

“I’ve had enough. Kidnapping, contaminate police, a rotten judicial system,” said Ricardo Robledo, a 43-year-old music producer who said he had been robbed numerous times. “This may begin a change.”

City officials refused to give a crowd estimate, but the Zocalo be able to hold nearly 100,000 family. Tens of thousands overflowed into the surrounding streets, unable to squeeze into the square. Thousands further protested in cities across the countrified.

In the capital, Romana Quintera, 72, wore T-shirt with a photograph of her baby grandson, who was kidnapped for ransom five years ago when gunmen burst into her domicile and killed her niece. Two people imprisoned for the attack have refused to reveal the boy’s fate, and Quintera said investigators have given up attached the case.

“We’re forlorn,” she said, holding back tears. “We ask authorities with all our inner part to be more sensitive. Maybe nothing resembling this has happened to them, or they would be other sensitive.”

Despite the check of several medicine kingpins, little has improved the ground since the Calderon commonwealth began its crackdown.

Homicides have surged in the manner that drug cartels battle each other for control of trafficking routes and stage vicious attacks against police nearly harvested land day. In the gang-plagued border state of Chihuahua alone, there have been more than 800 killings this year, double the number during the same term last year.

This week, a dozen beheaded bodies were originate in the Yucatan Peninsula, home to Mexico’s chiefly popular beach resort, Cancun.

While impoverished Mexicans playhouse towards daily strikes and protests, Saturday’s marches brought out thousands of middle-class citizens who are often the targets of kidnappings. The protest was inspired by the abduction and murder of the 14-year-old son of a wealthy businessman — a case that provoked an outcry when prosecutors said a police detective was a key participant in the withdrawal for ransom.

The boy’s male parent, Alejandro Marti, called adhering top government officials to get away from if they could not stem the crime signal. His challenge became a rally cry at the march, where many held up signs with his words: “If you can’t, requite.”

The first to arrive for the Mexico City protest was the family of 24-year-old Monica Alejandrina Ramirez, who was kidnapped in succession in 2004 and has not been heard from after.

Hours before the march began, the family stood silently underneath the independence monument, holding up large banners with her picture. Some colleagues of her mother, a circus performer, walked on stilts and wore clown wigs to help draw attention.

“The most frustrating thing has been the indolence of many of the the sway, their insensitivity,” said her author, Manuel Ramirez Juarez, a family medical practitioner. “I possess often asked myself, why? Why me? Why my daughter?”

Having staked his presidency on improving security, Calderon responded to the rising anger by summoning governors and mayors to a national security meeting, drawing up a a 74-point anti-crime plan.

It included plans for better police recruiting and oversight systems, as well as an anti-kidnapping strategy not above six months. The Defense Department promised to equip police by more powerful automatic weapons.

Calderon has urged patience, warning that rooting out drug gangs and bringing security to the streets would not happen by the agency of decree.

Neither will cleaning up and bolstering Mexico’s police.

In some northern towns, officers complain of having to share guns, and many have quit in extreme dread after seeing colleagues killed in front of their homes.

More than half of Mexico’s greatness and civic police officers have only a primary schooling, form it uphill for them to aspire to the highest ranks and salaries. Many are tempted to join the payrolls of criminal gangs.

“When you go in a puzzle, you go with fear — are you going to constitution it home or not?” said Almicar Polanco, 42, marching with well-nigh 2,000 others in the border city of Tijuana, across from San Diego. He clutched a flier with a faded picture of his father-in-law, kidnapped two years earlier and missing ever before this. Mexico City and Dan Keane in Tijuana contributed to this recital.