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He came back in a box.

A wooden coffin wrapped in cardboard, the kind used to protect freight. Eighteen years after leaving, that was how Silverio Villegas González returned to Michoacán. The plane landed in Guadalajara; from there, the hearse drove 10 hours through the hills until it reached Loma de Chupio, a rural community just outside the town center around 4 p.m. Sept. 26.

According to Michoacán-based reporter César Cabrera, who attended the funeral, the family held the wake inside the small wooden home where Villegas grew up — four rooms, a tin roof. About 20 people came the first night: bro

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