"It's looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, when the narco-traffickers controlled certain parts of the country," she said.
Her comments were made following a major speech to US foreign policy experts in Washington.
A Mexican government spokesman rejected Mrs Clinton's analogy.
Speaking in Mexico City, Alejandro Poire said the only aspect that the Mexican and Colombian conflicts share is their root cause - a high demand for drugs in the US.
Mr Poire also denied that the presence of drug cartels was tantamount to an insurgency, insisting that "all the efforts of the Mexican state were going into fighting criminals".
He added that "the collaboration with the US is an integral part of our strategy" in tackling drug cartels.
Mr Poire was responding to remarks Mrs Clinton made after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. Drug cartels, she said, "are showing more and more indices of insurgencies".
America's top diplomat said Mexico needed to maintain its political will to fight the cartels.
More than 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon deployed the army to fight the cartels in 2006.
The US has supported Mr Calderon's strategy, mainly through financial aid and military co-operation.
The Obama administration has also ackowledged some responsibility in the conflict, in part because of the flow of guns from the US to Mexican cartels.
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