The Full Enchilada

Though his country is the smallest in the Western Hemisphere, El Salvador's President, Lieutenant Colonel Jose Maria Lemus, 47, will get what Latin American diplomats call the "full enchilada" when he arrives in Washington next week on a twelve-day state visit to the U.S. Ingredients : an airport greeting from President Dwight Eisenhower,*quarters at Blair House, a White House dinner party, an address to a joint session of Congress, a white tie dinner at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria, and a Broadway ticker-tape parade, a visit to Monticello and to the New Salem, Ill. log cabin village where Lincoln lived as a young man.

The two most common topics of conversation on state visits to Washington--Communism and credit--will not have their usual urgency when Lemus comes to town. The planter-army oligarchy that runs El Salvador makes certain that no leftist ideologies nourish. Sound money policies and a balanced budget keep the currency stable at 2 1/2 colons to the dollar. But Lemus will try to stir up investor interest, both governmental and private.

El Salvador could use some capital infusion. The Massachusetts-sized country on the Pacific Coast of Central America still derives 60% of its export income from big coffee plantations owned mostly by a handful of rich old families. The farm wage has not yet topped 60-c- a day for the illiterate Indian masses, who are trucked to the polls every six years to vote their approval of the planters' latest officer-candidate for President. The head count of 2,400,000 citizens ranks El Salvador as the most crowded nation on the American continents, and population, despite an infant mortality rate of 20%, keeps going up by 4% a year. But Lemus, an efficient President, has completed the best road network in Central America. Now he would like to raise $190 million in public and private funds to fuel an ambitious "ten-year plan" designed to diversify agriculture, build schools, houses and light industries.

*Who last week announced that he had invited Mexico's President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, Ike's host a fortnight ago, to visit the U.S. this spring.

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