Violence in Michoacan

The window of a bank is riddled with bullet holes in the town of Apatzingan in Michoacan state, Mexico on Jan. 11, 2014. Residents from various towns were destroying property to protest the arrival of vigilantes, or members of “self-defense” groups, to their communities.

Mexican federal police patrol in Michoacan.

Vigilante groups in Michoacan state were ordered by the Mexican government to register their weapons in an effort to create a rural police force.

Esperanza Bejar Perez walks past the hearse carrying her son Roberto Carlos Zamora, 27. She said vigilante forces had been tormenting her son, demanding money, threatening his family and beating him repeatedly. Zamora, she said, took his own life rather than face them anymore.

A body is removed from a mass grave in La Barca on Nov. 15, 2013. Dozens of bodies were found in clandestine graves near the border between Jalisco and Michoacan states amid a turf war between the Knights Templar and New Generation cartels.

Flavio Gomez, identified by police as the brother of Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, head of the Knights Templar drug cartel, is escorted to a federal police truck at the airport in Mexico City on Feb. 27, 2015. Servando Gomez, a former teacher who became one of Mexico’s most-wanted drug lords, was also captured.