The unrelenting violence in Mexico has provoked three well-known Mexican cartoonists — Eduardo del Rio “Rius”, Jose Hernandez and Patricio Ortiz — to launch their own civic Twitter offensive.

Since yesterday, the hashtag #NomasSangre hit the Twitter waves in Mexico. Other hashtags like #RedMexico and #losqueremosvivos, were launched to promote mass reaction to violence in Mexico. #RedMexico is new, while #losqueremosvivos was launched when four Mexican journalists were kidnapped by drug traffickers last June and were lated released because of the public outcry. But what makes the new hashtag interesting is that it is backed by three of the most important cartoonists in a country where the political cartoon is de riguer. Important reporters and analysts have changed the profiles on Facebook and twitter avatars to the one created by the three cartoonists.

“There is a lot of unhappiness in the country. A lot f people are fed up and desperate but feel impotent”, Rius, one of Mexico´s most important cartoonists, told the weekly Proceso. It could not be phrased better. A recent poll determined that 60 percent of all Mexicans feel that last year was one of the most violent years in the four year drug war declared by President Felipe Calderon.

Mexico’s Christmas and new year were marked with grisly crimes. One was the abduction on 31 December of a woman accused of being a kidnapper who was herself grabbed from police as she was taken from a women´s prison to a hospital for a checkup. Her body was later found, half-naked and hanging from an overpass in the city of Monterrey.

This week, police found 15 decapitated bodies in the resort town of Acapulco.