First Guest

For his first post-election meeting with a top-ranking U.S. official, Mexico's President-elect Adolfo Lopez 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. Lopez Mateos generally favors U.S. development capital for Mexico.

The two high politicos talked 2- 1/2hours. 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 Lopez Mateos headed back to Mexico City to prepare for his Dec. 1 inauguration.

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