MEXICO: First Guest

For his first post-election meeting with a top-ranking U.S. official, Mexico’s President-elect Adolfo López Mateos invited a man he had never met. but had come to respect from a distance. Texas Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, Senate majority leader. In a sun-drenched hotel cottage overlooking Acapulco Bay one morning this week, the Mexican and the Texan pulled up chairs to a breakfast of diced tropical fruit, eggs and coffee, and started talking.

The idea of the meeting was helped along by U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Robert C. Hill, a friend of both men. Johnson is an increasingly ardent booster of U.S.-Latin American trade; as a Texan, he is well aware of the problems just south of the Rio Grande. López Mateos generally favors U.S. development capital for Mexico.

The two high politicos talked 2-½hours. Said Johnson: “I came to listen and learn as a friend, and I have done both.” He reported that he had invited the President-elect to visit his LBJ ranch in Texas, and that Lopez Mateos had accepted, although the date was left open. What else they discussed was their secret—but they planned to meet several more times before López Mateos headed back to Mexico City to prepare for his Dec. 1 inauguration.