AP PHOTOS: Editor selections from Latin America, Caribbean

This photo gallery highlights some of the top news images made by Associated Press photographers in Latin America and the Caribbean that were published in the past week.

People gathered to welcome the spring equinox at the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan outside Mexico’s capital.

Bolivian farmers staged a “gran acullico,” or “the great chewing of coca,” to demand the release of their jailed leader and protest restrictions on growing coca. In Paraguay, the National Farmers Federation held its annual march demanding more land and support from the government.

Argentine army veteran Jorge Altieri got back the blood-stained helmet that he wore during the 1982 war in the Falklands, where he lost it on the battlefield after it saved him from deadly shrapnel.

In Venezuela, a coalition of opposition parties and civic groups petitioned lawmakers for a law to protect workers who have been victims of political retaliation and unjustified dismissals, while government supporters held an “anti-imperialist” march.

Families of the victims of a Brazilian school shooting demonstrated carrying a national flag with 54 holes, each representing a child that the group Rio de Paz says were killed in crossfire from shootouts during police operations against drug traffickers.

Off Mexico’s Pacific coast, journalists toured the now closed Islas Marias penal colony, which was last of a half dozen island prisons once scattered around Latin America.

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Edited by photojournalist Fernando Llano in Caracas, Venezuela. On Twitter: https://twitter.com/JFernandoLlano