Former Michoacán security commissioner Alfredo Castillo Cervantes then asked them to assist in the efforts to capture the leader of the Los Caballeros Templarios cartel, Servando Gómez Martínez ("El Tuta"), who was then arrested in Morelia in February 2015.
When announcing the first attempt to disarm and dissolve the self-defense groups in December 2014, "Los Viagras", they took over the municipal presidency of Apatzingán and were violently evicted by the federal police on 6 January 2015, with a balance of 10 civilians dead and 21 wounded.
[4] Los Viagras expanded into the drug trade, first by becoming involved in the production and transportation of methamphetamine, which brought them into a turf dispute with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, particular the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán.
[5] One of the gangs' most famously reported homicidal acts stems from a viral video from 2018, in which they have two victims tied up, a father and son, in the outdoors.
[6] In February 2020, nine people, including three children, were killed by Jalisco New Generation gunmen in an arcade during a turf dispute.