Chávez joined the Regulators in his twenties, having already committed a number of small robberies and other crimes, and would prove useful to Billy the Kid's gang.

Together with Billy the Kid, Doc Scurlock, Charlie Bowdre, and the rest of the Regulators, Chávez engaged in the Lincoln County War that lasted from 1878 to 1879.

On April 1 of the same year, Lincoln sheriff William J. Brady, a Dolan backer, was killed by Billy the Kid's gang.

By March 1879, New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace began a fight against crime in that territory , and one of his priorities was to stop the ongoing war between the Dolans and the Tunstall-McSween backers.

With this in mind, Wallace formed the Lincoln County Mounted Rifles, a group of which Chávez became a member, as a private.

The "Mounted Rifles" failed in their purpose, however, and the group lasted only about three months, a period during which Chávez remained with Billy the Kid's gang.

Chávez allegedly testified alongside Billy the Kid in court to try to implicate the US Army in connection to the burning of the McSween house, and the subsequent deaths that occurred during the fires.

Silvas' other group, the "Bandits Society," was accused by Anglo immigrants to New Mexico Territory as operating much like a mafia, trying to make profits by forcing people out of their properties.

Vicente Silva ordered the killing of Patricio Maes, which was carried out on October 22, 1892 by José, Eugenio Alarid and Julian Trujillo.

In February 1893, the group was ordered to kill Silva's brother in law, Gabriel Sandoval, out of fear that he was privy to the murder and was going to inform the police.