By Teresa Puente
Tribune staff reporter

LAREDO, Texas -- Josefina and Alvaro Garcia loaded their three children, clutching water bottles and blankets, onto the red, white and blue bus with the speedy
rabbit logo, ending their 10-week summer vacation in Guanajuato, Mexico, in time to get the kids back to the Chicago area for the first day of school Tuesday.

Bus No. 849 was one of 10 making the daily migration from Laredo to Chicago. With names as varied as "Tornado," "Americanos" and "Autobuses Latinos," at
least six transportation companies cater to Mexican immigrants by offering service in Spanish. Their vehicles teem with passengers plying modern-day immigrant trails
linking Mexicans to states such as Illinois, Arkansas, Georgia and the Carolinas.

For the Garcia family, at $107 per ticket, the 27.5-hour road trip began in a cramped parking lot in Laredo, along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"I already miss Mexico," said their 12-year-old daughter, Viola, who spent her vacation being reunited with five friends she left behind when her family migrated to
Belvidere, Ill., almost three years ago.

The U.S. and Mexican governments recognize that the circular flow of immigrants between the two countries is constant. On Wednesday, Mexican President
Vicente Fox will meet with President Bush in Washington to continue their discussion on immigration.

Bush and Fox are studying proposals for a guest worker program or an "earned regularization" for some of the estimated 3 million undocumented Mexicans in the
United States. The Garcias were among 54 passengers who sank into the velvety, multi-colored seats on the bus run by a company called El Conejo, or the rabbit.
The bus headed north on Interstate Highway 35 at 9:45 a.m. Thursday as Mexican ballads and mambo music played on its radio.

Most who took bus 849 travel between Mexico and the U.S. at least once a year. To reach the border bus stop in Laredo, they had already traveled as much as 12
hours from the interior of Mexico.

A visit by Border Patrol

At 10:15 a.m. the bus slowly pulled up to the Border Patrol checkpoint a half hour north of Laredo. An agent in a green uniform and white cowboy hat walked
down the bus aisle as the travelers cautiously held up their green cards, visas and passports.

Some of the immigrants were once undocumented, but they legalized under the 1986 amnesty. Others traveled on tourist visas to visit family members. Some have
relatives who are illegal immigrants. But all the immigrants on this bus were given the green light to continue their journey north.

Ines Gallegos proudly flashed her blue U.S. passport to the agent. She spent 10 days in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where she shopped at an annual artisan's fair and
visited her sisters.

Gallegos moved to Chicago's Southwest Side more than 30 years ago and became a U.S. citizen five years ago. Her children have achieved their mother's dream for
a better life, pursuing careers as a paramedic, psychologist, financial analyst and chemical engineer.

"Here in the U.S. they have had great opportunities. It would have been much harder for them in Mexico," said Gallegos, 55, who knitted a pastel-colored blanket
for a grandchild to be born in December--as a U.S. citizen.

At 1:30 p.m. the bus pulled up to Taqueria Mazatlan, an all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet in San Marcos, Texas. More than a dozen buses stop daily for a $5.95 hot
meal of chicken fajitas and beef tacos. Guadalupe Garza walked off the bus in comfortable slippers and wrapped his arm around his wife, Rosa. The San Luis Potosi
residents planned a 10-day trip to Chicago to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. They have childhood friends on Chicago's North Side.

"They are like family. We can just talk and talk and don't even have to go out to see the city," said Rosa Garza, 48, who carried a doggie bag back onto the bus
following the 35-minute lunch break.

By 4 p.m. the bus headed north toward Troy, Texas, through a steady rainfall. Traffic ground to a standstill and buses, trucks and cars were backed up for nearly 10
miles.

"We are trying to find a road around I-35. We'll experiment and see if we can save some time," the bus steward, Jose Ramon Gonzalez, announced to the
passengers over a microphone.

Not lost at all

The driver, Juan Jose Gomez, took a detour down winding side roads and past a pasture full of grazing cows. Some of the passengers worried the driver was lost,
but after 10 minutes he found a road parallel to the freeway and sped past four lanes of stalled highway traffic.

As the bus cruised past a flooded underpass, the cause of the traffic jam, several of the passengers stood up for a better view. "Oooh," they exclaimed. At 7:15 p.m.
the bus stopped at El Conejo's main offices in Dallas where a replacement driver, Gabriel Trejo, and assistant, Elizabeth Torres, took over.

Torres served a fresh round of soft drinks from a large cooler and passed out snacks. "Do we want to see a movie or rest?" she asked in a perky voice.

"How about an action movie?" one passenger shouted stirring boisterous laughter among his fellow travelers.

On the six small television sets mounted above the seats, the passengers had already watched two cheesy, black and white Mexican comedies and "Passenger 57,"
an airplane hijacking drama starring Wesley Snipes and dubbed in Spanish. Torres pulled out a subtitled version of "The Mummy" from her personal video collection.

Slumber time

By 11 p.m. most of the passengers reclined in their chairs and cuddled under blankets and towels. The starchy smell of McDonald's fries lingered from dinner. A few
listened to radio headsets and others whispered goodnight to their children.

Maria Luisa Rangel, 40, slept in the last row of the bus with her 5-year-old son, Luis Jesus, at her side and her daughter, Jocelyn, at her feet. They spent a month in
her hometown of Aguascalientes, where the children saw horses and cows for the first time.

"It was good for them to get out of the city," said Rangel, who migrated to Chicago with her family 20 years ago.

As they fell asleep lightning flashed in the raven-colored sky illuminating a cluster of clouds. The driver turned down the interior lights and put on a Spanish-language
compact disc by the pop group ABBA featuring the hit "Dancing Queen."

The bus made eight stops along the 1,500-mile route that traversed five states, including a Texas terrain baked a golden brown. A few passengers disembarked in
Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., where a third driver took over the helm at the crack of dawn Friday. The bus continued via Interstate
Highway 70 across Missouri and over green hills covered in a light morning mist through St. Louis. Rows of cornfields signaled the bus' arrival in Illinois on I-55.

Trip takes its toll

By 10:15 a.m. Friday the pungent smell of stale breath filled the bus and some passengers brushed their furry teeth in the tiny bus bathroom. A few had stiff necks
and their stomachs were grumbling when the bus pulled into a Wendy's in Lincoln, Ill.

A world away from the border, several of the passengers asked for help translating the English menu as fast-food clerks stared at the group of Mexican immigrants
with wide eyes.

"How do you say bacon and eggs?" they asked in Spanish.

At 1:10 p.m. the bus exited I-55 at California Avenue and headed to El Conejo offices in a new strip mall at 28th Street and Kedzie Avenue.

Safe ending to long journey

Yolanda Perez tucked her rosary under her white T-shirt. Her mother, Yolanda Coronado, also wore a gold Virgin Mary pendant, and they thanked God that their
journey, which started in Monterrey, Mexico, had ended safely.

Coronado, 59, who came to Chicago for her grandson's first birthday party, hailed a cab to the Southwest Side where her daughter, Pilar Castillo, waited outside
her brick two-flat holding her son, Froylan. They shared hugs and kisses in a joyous reunion.

They planned to stay just eight days this time. But they hope to take another bus trip to Chicago when Castillo has her second baby.

"We'll be back again in January," the proud grandmother said.

Copyright © 2001, Chicago Tribune