Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday ruled out launching a new war against drug cartels, as she presented a national security plan aimed at reducing raging criminal violence.

Sheinbaum, the first woman to lead the Latin American nation, said her government would prioritize tackling the root causes of crime, as well as making better use of intelligence.

"The war on drugs will not return," the leftist president told a news conference, referring to an offensive launched in 2006 involving the military and supported by the United States.

Since then, a spiral of criminal violence has left more than 450,000 people dead and tens of thousands missing.

Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor who was sworn in on October 1, pledged to stick to her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's "hugs not bullets" strategy of using social policy to address the causes of crime.

"We are not looking for extrajudicial executions, which is what was happening before. What are we going to use? Prevention, attention to the causes, intelligence and presence" of authorities, she said.

While Lopez Obrador prioritized prevention over force, he controversially put the National Guard under the control of the armed forces.

Critics said the move marked another step toward the militarization of the country -- a claim that both Lopez Obrador and his ally Sheinbaum have denied.

"There are families that today do not have access to reliable municipal police or to a fully strengthened state police force. That's where the National Guard will play an important role," Sheinbaum's public security minister, Omar Garcia Harfuch, said.

Sheinbaum outlined her strategy amid shock over the murder and reported beheading on Sunday of Alejandro Arcos, mayor of the capital of Guerrero, one of Mexico's most violent states.

Meanwhile, in the northwestern cartel stronghold of Sinaloa, bloodshed blamed on gang infighting has left more than 150 people dead in a month.

- 'Global criminal enterprises' -

Mexico's cartel-related violence is concentrated in or along drug trafficking routes, borders and ports of entry for cocaine from Colombia as well as ingredients for fentanyl from China, in addition to avocado and lime-producing regions.

The country's two main drug gangs -- the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, which are among the world's most powerful criminal organizations -- wage turf wars and forcibly recruit members.

Mexico's most violent state, Guanajuato, a central industrial hub roughly the size of Belgium, has also seen a recent spike in bloodshed.

That is due to a "counter-offensive" by the Sinaloa Cartel and its allies against Jalisco New Generation, which dominates the region, security expert David Saucedo said.

The two cartels "are at the heart" of a synthetic drugs crisis in the United States, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

They are "global criminal enterprises" that source precursor chemicals from China, operate "clandestine labs" in Mexico, and use their "vast distribution networks to transport the drugs into the United States," it says.

Violence has also escalated in Chiapas state, located on Mexico's southern border, described by the InSight Crime think tank as "a major smuggling hub of both drugs and migrants."

There, violence has coincided with the Jalisco New Generation's incursion into areas that were once strongholds of the Sinaloa Cartel, it said.

In Guerrero, several gangs fight for control of routes used to bring in drugs by sea.

In the north, violence linked to drug and migrant smuggling into the United States makes border cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Reynosa among the world's most dangerous.

Throughout their history, the cartels have been able to profit from the corruption of security officials.

Genaro Garcia Luna, a former public security minister, was convicted in the United States of receiving vast sums of money to allow the Sinaloa Cartel to smuggle tons of cocaine.

© Agence France-Presse