In Colombia, 40,000 people marched in Bogota Thursday to honor thousands of victims of right-wing paramilitaries and death squads who are missing around the country. The protest came less than a week after the Colombian military carried out an attack inside Ecuador that killed at least twenty-four FARC rebels. Thursday’s protest was organized by the State Crimes Victims Movement. Marchers included human rights activist Ivan Cepeda, whose father, a Colombian senator, was brutally killed in 1994.

Ivan Cepeda: “To tell the government that we don’t want anymore paramilitaries, to tell the government that we don’t want anymore violations of human rights of farmers who have been taken out of their lands, because they deserve a better future. We want democracy. This is a political defeat for the government of President Alvaro Uribe, who rejected this march, and he’s attacking it by saying it’s a march of guerrillas.”

Meanwhile, Nicaragua has joined Ecuador and Venezuela in breaking off relations with Colombia. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega accused Colombia of carrying out political terrorism.