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 News from Around the Americas | December 2005 
Small Bus Companies Give Mexican Immigrants a Ride Home for Christmas
 Daniel Connolly - Associated Press
Little Rock, AK - Seven-year-old Erika Salazar didn't want to let her grandfather go. She clung to him, and cried.
"I love you, Grandpa!" she yelled in Spanish in the moments before the van pulled away from the store parking lot.
Her grandfather, construction worker Florencio Salazar, 56, was traveling by van and then bus from Little Rock to a small town in central Mexico. His wife was waiting for him there - they hadn't seen each other in the three years that he has been in the United States.
This month, many Mexican immigrants make a traditional journey home in time for Christmas. In the South, some choose to travel with numerous small bus companies that have sprung up as the region's Hispanic population has grown. Customers can expect relatively low prices, service in Spanish and a long ride - in some cases more than 24 hours.
In the moments before he departed, Florencio Salazar, in his white cowboy hat, said he was happy about going home to his village outside of Mexico City.
"It's a culture that we have at Christmas that we want to be together with our family," said his son, Marco Antonio Salazar, 34, also a construction worker. He, his wife and their two children came to see his father off as he returns home to stay for a year.
The bus company that Salazar used, Dallas-based Transportes Rangel, owns just two buses plus a few smaller vehicles and picks up most of its passengers in Nashville, Tenn., Little Rock and Dallas, owner Jose Luis Rangel said.
A one-way trip from Little Rock to the northern Mexican city of Monterrey costs $160 - about half the cost of an airplane ticket purchased three weeks in advance. A trip to Guadalajara, a city in central Mexico, costs $200 and lasts 30 hours, he said. The buses carry a crew of two to three drivers for safety.
Rangel said that even in relatively isolated Little Rock, he faces stiff competition from other Mexican bus lines.
"Everywhere, everywhere!" he said. "Too many people doing this job every place."
Rangel started his company in 1986 and began offering service in Little Rock 10 or 12 years ago. Another firm, Transportes Eclipse Corp., of Forest Park, Ga., started in Arkansas around 2002, receptionist Alma Sanchez said.
Transportes Eclipse picks up passengers two days a week in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. In the heavy winter travel season the company's seven buses transport as many as 200 people on a Saturday, she said.
A trip from Charlotte, N.C., to the end of the line in the Mexican state of Guanajuato lasts around 42 hours, she said. There are a few small luxuries - reclining seats, heating and air conditioning, televisions and a stereo system.
When drivers stop at gas stations and rest stops, people sometimes ask where they're headed, Sanchez said.
"They'll be surprised to hear that there are buses actually going to Mexico," she said.
Both Rangel and Sanchez said Mexicans typically don't have trouble crossing from the United States into Mexico. But they said the companies caution returning passengers that they need passports or visas to re-enter the United States or risk being left on the Mexican side of the border.
Most of the companies are unknown outside the Mexican community. Transportes Eclipse, for example, advertises only in Spanish.
Customers usually buy tickets at Hispanic-owned stores and restaurants, which also serve as pick-up points.
On a recent Monday, passengers and their families and friends waited for the noon departure at the Mercado San Jose, a grocery store and restaurant in southwest Little Rock. Some leaned on pickup trucks in the parking lot, their luggage in the truck bed.
Lorenzo Medina, 28, who works as a Chinese restaurant cook in Stuttgart, said it had been five years since he was home in Monterrey. Pausing from a celebratory meal of tacos with friends in the restaurant, he said he planned to stay for one year before returning to the United States. Medina was carrying gifts nieces and nephews.
On this day, a large van, not a bus, picked up the passengers, who would transfer to a bus in Dallas. It quickly became clear that there was too much luggage to fit in the van and the small trailer behind it.
Medina watched as the bus driver used yellow rope to attach one of his boxes to the trailer's roof. The box contained a gift for his father that had to be carefully wrapped with a blanket.
"I hope it gets there all right and doesn't get broken or anything like that," he said.
For the Salazar family, departure was both wrenching and anticlimactic. The passengers climbed into the van, but there was an unannounced delay, leaving the Salazar family in the awkward position of standing outside while the children's grandfather was a few feet away. After a few minutes of waiting, Florencio Salazar got out for another round of hugs.
Ricardo Salazar, 5, seemed distracted, but his sister was crying.
By the time the van pulled out, carrying 11 passengers, the emotion had reached the children's father.
Marco Antonio Salazar smoked a cigarette, tears running down his face. |
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