Above, Mexican peasants celebrate after President Vicente Fox was forced to back down from plans to use their lands to make way for a $2.3 billion airport in the town of San Salvador Atenco, about 15 miles northeast of Mexico City.

Thousands of peasants and their supporters blocked the entrances to the town for four days and held 19 people hostage, most of them police officers, until the government announced the suspension of the project. Protests have been building for months against the 11,000-acre airport. Close to 30 agricultural communities would have been affected by this construction project.

"The land is not for sale," said Ignacio del Valle, one of the peasants leading the protests. The peasant leaders told the press that the problem "is not the ridiculous price offered by the government for our land, but the ownership of it."  
 
 
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