The propagandists

Starting in September 1939, John Marshall, a senior officer of the Rockefeller Foundation, gathered the leading US scientists working on “the general problem of mass communication” in a monthly seminar organized and paid for by the Foundation.Footnote ¹⁴ Marshall wanted the scholars “to create a most comprehensive picture of how public opinion is being formed.”Footnote ¹⁵ The social scientists were handpicked by Marshall, and in most cases they were the heads of projects or institutions that were related to mass communication and financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. They included, among others, political scientist Harold Lasswell and psychologist and pollster Hadley Cantril.Footnote ¹⁶ Additional scholars working on mass communication and propaganda, such as the psychologist Leonard Doob, were invited to specific meetings of the group.Footnote ¹⁷

The leading member of the group was Harold Lasswell, who was probably the most prominent US scholar in the thriving field of propaganda studies.Footnote ¹⁸ He had made his name with a dissertation on the propaganda strategies employed by the main combatant nations in World War I and defined propaganda as the “control of opinion by significant symbols,” which translated into “stories, rumors, reports, and other forms of social communication.” As for the use of propaganda in wartime, Lasswell identified three fields of application: as a psychological weapon to weaken enemy morale, as a tool to maintain good relations with allies as well as to persuade neutrals, and finally as an instrument to boost morale and unity at the home front.Footnote ¹⁹

Considering future involvement of the United States in the escalating wars in Europe and Asia, the members of the communications seminar deemed it inevitable that the US Federal Government would have to engage in mass communication at home and abroad. In a national poll, US Americans had contested that they feared German attempts to seize control in Latin America, and 80% of the interviewees were in favor of US action against such an attempt. On the basis of this poll, the scholars outlined a foreign communication strategy. The US government should prepare to become active and establish communication channels with and in Latin America. To do so effectively, the scholars pressed for immediate recruitment of scientists like themselves. “They [the scientists] would then be ready and available for the imminent need of maintaining good relations with countries friendly to us, particularly the countries to our south; and for any eventual need of propaganda war.”Footnote ²⁰ Their call to Uncle Sam would soon be heard, and several members of the communications seminar would actively shape US propaganda toward Latin America and beyond.Footnote ²¹

Already by the end of the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration had become concerned with Axis propaganda in Latin America. US journalist Leland Stowe described how Axis agents “buy up influential newspapers, ply business leaders with champagne, bribe politicians, spend money like drunken sailors.” He urged US action to counter the “propaganda and anti-democratic poison” spread by the Axis powers in Latin America. As can be observed from the poll cited earlier, the fear of the Axis gaining a foothold in Latin America was widespread. Accordingly, Latin America was seen as the only place where the Roosevelt administration could become politically active without provoking isolationist backlash at home.Footnote ²² These factors led to the establishment of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA) in August 1940. Its task was to win over Latin American states as partners, foster pan- or inter-Americanism, and counter Axis activities in Latin America.Footnote ²³ Soon, the work conducted by this government agency would be characterized by State Department officials as “the greatest outpouring of propagandistic material by a state ever.”Footnote ²⁴

The organization of the OIAA reflected the strong position of its chairman Nelson A. Rockefeller. The young Republican enjoyed the trust and affection of the president and had successfully lobbied with the latter for the organization’s establishment and later expansion. Rockefeller employed many personal friends and combined governmental with private initiatives. US businessmen usually formed the OIAA’s coordination committees in the region and oversaw some of the agency’s local initiatives; others were carried out in cooperation with the Rockefeller Foundation. These initiatives were manifold and targeted both Latin America and the United States. In Latin America, they included blacklisting Axis firms, building infrastructure, launching health initiatives, and—most prominently—spreading anti-Axis and pro–United States propaganda.Footnote ²⁵ In that, the OIAA was “the only office of the government to whom has been assigned a specific territory to win by propaganda.”Footnote ²⁶

However, there were limits to US involvement in Latin America, as the United States had bound itself to the so-called Good Neighbor Policy. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt had gradually abandoned the old, imperialist Big Stick Policy and turned to a policy of mutual understanding with Latin American states. Roosevelt even conceded to “non-intervention” and “non-interference,” for which Argentinian and Mexican politicians and diplomats had pressed for decades. During the 1930s, the Good Neighbor Policy led to increased trade and much better relations with Latin American countries.Footnote ²⁷ In its discourse, the OIAA relied heavily on the Good Neighbor Policy, stressing the benefits of friendship and partnership between Latin America and the United States. Consequently, Rockefeller’s office could not act unilaterally and had to seek the consent and cooperation of local governments for its projects, including the spreading of propaganda. US ambassador George Messersmith’s evaluation of the Mexican case indicates that this was also a technical necessity, as he remarked that “no matter what organization we have here it can only function effectively if we have the sympathy, understanding and support of the Mexican authorities. It is the Mexican authorities and not we which control the press, the radio and the films.”Footnote ²⁸

To develop an adequate propaganda program for Latin America, the OIAA relied on the leading US scholars in the field, who had formed part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s communications seminar. Whereas Harold Lasswell and Hadley Cantril advised the OIAA occasionally, Leonard Doob was an employee of the OIAA and in charge of formulating its general strategy. It aimed at a united hemisphere under US leadership and included both short-term goals directly linked to the war effort and long-term objectives.Footnote ²⁹ To achieve these aims, the OIAA should appeal directly to “the minds of individual Latin Americans.”Footnote ³⁰

Leonard Doob considered film “the ideal medium” for doing so. In his dissertation Propaganda. Its psychology and technique (1935), he explained that, in the case of film, “the propagandist is assured of a huge audience, since people will flock voluntarily to the theatre.” Doob thought that these movie-goers, seeking entertainment and relaxation, would not actively resist hidden indoctrination. Though they would reject overt propaganda, subtle, repeated messages and stereotypes would be quite successful.Footnote ³¹ In a working paper of the Rockefeller Foundation’s communications seminar, film was considered the easiest medium to exert control over, as well as to reach and to influence a mass audience through. Four factors were identified to this respect: the centralized movie industry, its relatively small output, the few locations of exposure (the cinemas), and the importance large parts of the population gave to the movies.Footnote ³² Conveniently enough, this seemingly ideal medium for propaganda was a very successful US export product, and Hollywood had a market share of 73% and an established distribution system in Latin America by 1940. This led to some Latin American contestation, such as the Cuban Communist Party’s “cine-debates” to expose US imperialism, but the Hollywood stars were still extremely popular in the region.Footnote ³³ Therefore, the OIAA entered a mutually beneficial partnership with the film industry to spread US propaganda in Latin America.

Some of the most prominent Hollywood stars of that time were not of flesh and blood, but of ink and color. Their names were Donald Duck, Goofy, or Mickey Mouse, and they were the property and trademarks of Walt Disney Productions. During the 1930s, Walt Disney had created the most successful and most influential animation studio in the world, delighting young and old. His shorts were played worldwide in cinemas as openers before the feature film, and he had revolutionized animation with new techniques and the early adaption of sound and color.Footnote ³⁴ With Snow White (1937), which became the most successful movie of 1938, he had also created the first animated feature film.Footnote ³⁵ However, by 1940 the earnings of Snow White were all gone, and Disney underwent difficult times with the loss of the European market due to the war and labor unrest at its studios.Footnote ³⁶ In this time of crisis, Disney was approached by the OIAA.

The first contact was established in late 1940, and by June 1941 the first contract between the OIAA and Disney was signed. The OIAA would finance a survey journey for Walt Disney and 15 of his staff to South America. In return, Disney should produce 12 shorts with Latin American topics. The OIAA would not provide the money to produce the cartoons but indemnify Walt Disney Productions for possible losses. As for the content of the shorts, the Rockefeller office gave Disney free reign, as they trusted in his “sensitivity to what the public likes.”Footnote ³⁷ Not only did the cooperation with the OIAA provide financial guarantees for the stricken studio, but it also allowed Disney to escape the troubles with his striking staff, who demanded the right to unionize. Ultimately, the labor conflict at the Disney studio was settled through arbitration while Disney was away on his survey and goodwill tour.Footnote ³⁸ Shortly thereafter, with US entry into the war, a new, much more extensive contract between Disney and the OIAA was signed.Footnote ³⁹ Other government agencies followed suit so that during the war around 90% of Disney’s output was contract work for the US government.Footnote ⁴⁰

One could ask whether Disney would have accepted the offer by the OIAA so willingly under different circumstances. After all, despite sympathies for President Roosevelt, the ultraconservative Walt Disney had long been an isolationist and was critical of too much state interference. At one point, he was even accused of being a Nazi sympathizer.Footnote ⁴¹ However, with his studio in crisis, Disney gladly accepted the offer to work for the US Federal Government. The nature of this work was stated in no uncertain terms in the project authorization of the second contract from January 1942: Disney was contracted “to produce powerful propaganda films to serve the democracies, (…) and to strengthen the morale of the Hemisphere.”Footnote ⁴²

But Walt Disney Productions was not just a receiver of orders; they actively shaped propaganda in coordination with the OIAA. In early 1942, the novelist and Disney employee Robert Spencer Carr presented the studio’s ideas to the Motion Picture Society of the Americas (MPS), the Hollywood branch of the OIAA. Carr’s 39-page document was received enthusiastically, as a handwritten note by MPS official Luigi Luraschi reveals. He considered Carr’s paper “the most intelligent approach to the problem at hand that I have ever read.”Footnote ⁴³ In it, Carr not only presented 49 ideas for shorts by Walt Disney Productions but also elaborated on the messages and techniques of animated propaganda as well as its distribution. Carr advocated for simple messages, delivered by a narrator voice that the audience ideally knew and appreciated, and underscored by the animation. For Carr, animation constituted a “magical medium” that was characterized by its “profound potentialities for evoking sentiment and awe.” He argued for making “full use of this quality” by “creating a deeply religious feeling, and associating this with political ideals.” Carr distinguished between “direct propaganda” and “indirect propaganda.” The former was directly associated with the war and inter-American unity, whereas “indirect propaganda” delivered practical messages on health that would improve the lives of the audience. All shorts were supposed to be educational and entertaining at the same time—something only the “Disney men” could deliver, according to Carr.Footnote ⁴⁴

Both the members of Walt Disney Productions and the OIAA shared the perception that, through the medium of film, the masses could easily be influenced, and they intended to do exactly that. In an internal OIAA document, it was stressed that motion pictures were “serving, as no other media can serve, to cause the peoples of the other American republics to like, trust and respect the peoples of the United States, and to join with them in the development of a lasting policy of Hemisphere solidarity, which is the basis for a permanent Good Neighbor Policy.”Footnote ⁴⁵

The movies

In total, Disney produced 30 films under the contracts with the OIAA, which can be divided into the following three categories: “Good Neighbor pictures,” “war shorts,” and “educational films.”Footnote ⁴⁶ In the first war years, Disney focused on the first two categories, which can also be labelled “direct propaganda,” according to Robert S. Carr’s categorization.Footnote ⁴⁷ The “Good Neighbor pictures” stressed the friendship between the United States and Latin America through encounters of Disney’s stars such as Donald Duck with Latin American characters, whereas the “war shorts” debunked and ridiculed the totalitarian tactics of the Axis.

The “Good Neighbor pictures” refer to the movies that were produced “in the interests of Hemisphere solidarity” under the first contract between OIAA and Disney from summer 1941.Footnote ⁴⁸ Instead of 12 shorts, as stated in the contract, Disney produced two feature films Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944), as well as four stand-alone shorts. Saludos Amigos was the first of the Disney films for the OIAA to be released and consisted of four episodes, depicting some of the countries Disney had visited on his South American survey and goodwill tour in 1941. In the artful episode “Aquarela do Brasil,” Donald Duck, guided by the local parrot José Carioca, explored an exoticized watercolor world.Footnote ⁴⁹ As in all the episodes of Saludos Amigos, and the “Good Neighbor pictures” in general, Latin America was depicted full of clichés and shown as an exotic Sehnsuchtsort (a place of where one longs to be). Accordingly, the films could fulfill their double function of showing to Latin Americans that they were considered and seen positively by US Americans, whereas the US audience was confronted with positive imagery on their neighbors to the south or even with an escape from the reality of a world at war.

Another recurring topic of the “Good Neighbor pictures” was the interaction of known Disney figures with new, Latin American characters. Their interactions always followed a similar script: The US characters found themselves in a new setting, making fools of themselves in their attempts at blending in, and were finally helped and a little ridiculed by their Latin American counterparts. This was true of Goofy in the Gaucho episode of Saludos Amigos, Pluto in the short Pluto and the Armadillo (1943), or Donald Duck with his friends José Carioca from Brazil and Panchito Pistolas from Mexico in The Three Caballeros (1944). These new birds in the Disney universe were also a recognition of the importance of Brazil and Mexico and could serve as propagandistic coup for these governments.

A feature especially present in The Three Caballeros was overt sexism and the sexualization of Latin America. In the recurring live-action scenes of the film, an animated Donald Duck was shown aggressively desiring or even chasing scantily dressed, white Latin American beauties.Footnote ⁵⁰ While the creation of Latin American characters and their friendship with the famous Disney stars seemed an appropriate means to evoke “Hemisphere solidarity,” sexism and the sexualization of Latin America do not appear to be that promising from today’s perspective. However, the depiction of Latin Americans as “lively and happy, sexy and spectacular,” as Philip Swanson put it,Footnote ⁵¹ was also a conscious renunciation of former Hollywood depictions of Latin Americans as “silly or ridiculous persons, or as generally unsympathetic characters.”Footnote ⁵² Hence, OIAA officials such as Russell Pierce, the assistant director of the Motion Picture Division, did not see those films critically, but saw an immense potential in the depiction of United States and Latin American friendship as shown in Disney’s “Good Neighbor Pictures.”Footnote ⁵³

Quite different in their message and without visible Latin American reference were the four so-called war shorts, which consisted of anti-Nazi propaganda. The ideas for these shorts were developed as part of the second contract with the OIAA and presented to the Motion Picture Society of the Americas.Footnote ⁵⁴ However, Disney feared for negative reactions if he were to produce overt anti-Axis propaganda for general distribution with sponsoring by the US government, which is why a private sponsor—the magazine Reader’s Digest—took over.Footnote ⁵⁵ Still, the OIAA paid Disney for the rights to use these films non-commercially in Latin America.Footnote ⁵⁶

Similar to anti-Axis live-action films of the time, Disney’s four war shorts tried to debunk and delegitimize Nazi propaganda and tactics. In particular, the content of Education for Death (1943) probably rang a bell with its US audiences. The documentary style and the focus on the indoctrination of children, regimentation in the form of marching soldiers, attacks on the church, and the depiction of Germans as slaves of the state resembled Frank Capra’s famous Prelude to War (1942).Footnote ⁵⁷ The representation of Germans as slaves and victims of the Nazi Regime was also congruent with OIAA guidelines on how to depict the enemy.Footnote ⁵⁸ Those guidelines in turn resembled the narrative spread by Franklin D. Roosevelt.Footnote ⁵⁹ In a radio address on June 14, 1942, Roosevelt spoke of the suppressed German people “dominated by their Nazi whipmasters.”Footnote ⁶⁰ In Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), Donald Duck was depicted as victim of such “Nazi whipmasters.” Pitiful Donald, living in a world full of swastikas and without privacy or enough food, was woken up by a heavily caricatured Nazi marching band including Mussolini and a Japanese soldier. They entered his house and drove him to work in a munitions factory. In factory sequences inspired by Modern Times (1936), Donald collapsed from exhaustion and woke up again, this time in his stars-and-stripes home. The Nazi episode turned out to be just a nightmare.Footnote ⁶¹ Der Fuehrers Face was a big hit in theaters and won an Oscar in 1943; its title song was sold over 1.5 million times.Footnote ⁶² Especially in Der Fuehrers Face, but also in sequences of the other three war shorts, Disney made use of animation’s great potential to ridicule the enemy through caricature. Showing the fear-spreading Nazis and their allies as a laughingstock was therefore the great strength of Disney’s war shorts.

OIAA officials liked Disney’s anti-Nazi films from the beginning. Already in the story board phase of Der Fuehrer’s Face, it was noted that “the satirical method used in the development of this subject cannot help but create in the mind of the audience a complete disgust for the ways of our enemy.”Footnote ⁶³ Education for Death was praised in the same report and considered an “invaluable contribution” to the Latin American propaganda film program for its showing of the Nazi break with family and church.Footnote ⁶⁴ Despite not directly targeting Latin American audiences, Disney’s war shorts were considered very effective by the OIAA. Ridiculing and debunking the enemy was probably most fruitful in Latin America, where Axis propaganda, which at least in the first war years was widely available, could be countered directly.

However, the war moved fast, and the short-term goal of uniting the hemisphere against the Axis under US leadership—with the notable exception of Argentina—was soon achieved. Consequently, the OIAA shifted to a long-term strategy of preserving a dominant US position in Latin America. Part of this strategy was the “educational films” commissioned by the OIAA with Disney under the same contract as the war shorts. These 19 films followed the script of Robert S. Carr’s “indirect propaganda” and overwhelmingly dealt with health topics. The two exceptions were the documentary Amazon Awakens (1944) and the agricultural short The Grain that Built a Hemisphere (1943), which mixed instruction on corn with the message of a united hemisphere standing together in war. All the other “educational films” dealt with different health topics.

Health initiatives by US actors in Latin America already had a considerable history at that time. They constituted an integral part of the various so-called “civilizing missions,” of which Henry Ford’s rubber city Fordlandia serves as notable example. “Civilizing missions” such as Ford’s saw not only the alleged overcoming of nature, in his case by cultivating rubber, but also racist and paternalizing attempts to “civilize” the local population by disease control and medicalization.Footnote ⁶⁵ Ford’s ultimately failed attempt was treated as success story in Disney’s Amazon Awakens. The leading US actor in “civilizing” through health initiatives all over Latin America was the Rockefeller Foundation, with its large-scale campaigns to fight diseases such as yellow fever.Footnote ⁶⁶ The OIAA—with its close ties to the Rockefeller Foundation—took on such initiatives.Footnote ⁶⁷ Those OIAA health initiatives were often closely linked to US interests, such as the campaigns against malaria that were carried out in the areas where rubber for the US industry was produced.Footnote ⁶⁸

The OIAA’s fight against malaria was not only carried out in the field but also on the screen. One of Disney’s first health pictures, Winged Scourge (1943), showed the seven dwarfs from Snow White (1937) taking numerous precautions to protect themselves and their house against the malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquito, depicted as the enemy. In their task, shown as joyful exercise in cooperation with forest animals, they were guided by a narrator master voice. The Mexican-American OIAA employee Edmundo Lasalle considered the dwarfs “grotesque creatures of Nordic legends” and criticized the film as unsuited for a Latin American context, but his intervention was ignored.Footnote ⁶⁹ The film closed with a comparison between the happy and healthy dwarves and a family afflicted by malaria. The moral of the story was expressed by the narrator: “Contrast their peace and happiness [meaning the dwarves] with the misery and sorrow of this unfortunate, plague-ridden family. These people have lost everything, simply because the failed to take a few easy precautions.”Footnote ⁷⁰ The same Social Darwinist moral was provided in the later films of Disney’s Health for the Americas series. In Cleanliness Brings Health (1945), the dichotomy between healthy-and-happy and sick-and-unhappy was depicted by means of two Latin American families. Through the sick-and-unhappy family was shown how a lack of hygiene led to sickness and despair. In contrast, the healthy-and-happy family served as a model to show audiences the impact of simple health measures. The message of the short was clear and was expressed by the narrator at the end: “Always remember, cleanliness brings health and happiness.”Footnote ⁷¹

Even though the messages of Disney’s early health pictures and those from the Health for the Americas series were very similar, they differed considerably in their style and targeted audience. The early health pictures such as Winged Scourge starred famous Disney characters, made references to the war, and were elaborately animated. They looked like any other Disney short and could be shown to wide audiences, as they combined their health messages with entertainment. In contrast, the shorts of the Health for the Americas series were very simple in their animation and did not resemble other Disney shorts. There were two reasons for this. The technique applied in films such as Winged Scourge was labor-intensive and lengthy. In wartime, labor and time were short. With simpler technique, more films could be produced more quickly. The other reason was the targeting of a specific rural Latin American audience with the Health for the Americas series. A survey conducted by Disney in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador concluded that the emphasis should be laid on clear and simple messages and measures regarding the health problems the visited communities were suffering from, instead of elaborate animation and story. The survey also indicated that Disney regarded the intellect of its targeted audience as limited.Footnote ⁷²

Disney’s prejudices against rural Latin Americans were clearly visible in the Health for the Americas films, which were racist and paternalizing. The Mexican historian Maria Rosa Gudiño Cejudo highlighted how the two Latin American families depicted in the Health for the Americas films not only differed in hygiene but also in skin color.Footnote ⁷³ The careless and dirty family had brown skin and was animated in a caricatured way, whereas the clean family was white and drawn in realistic proportions.Footnote ⁷⁴ Beyond hygienic measures, whiteness served as key to modernity. The equation of whiteness with modernity and superiority made in these films was not only common among white US Americans but also among Latin American elites, who overwhelmingly identified as white. The latter often shared the racist stereotypes toward dark-skinned or indigenous Latin Americans expressed in Disney’s educational films.Footnote ⁷⁵ Consequently, there were no official protests to be feared for Disney or the OIAA when operating with racist stereotypes in films for an exclusively rural Latin American audience. When in turn the OIAA and Disney presented Latin America to broad US and Latin American audiences, it was a white and progressive—or at least a white, sexy, and friendly—Latin America, as in The Three Caballeros.Footnote ⁷⁶ In a climate of normalized racism, whiteness served Disney and the OIAA to either present a modern Latin America or to show Latin Americans how to become modern.

Disney’s “educational films” were generally well received by Latin American governments, which sometimes even used them for their own campaigns, but they also spurred harsh criticism by some Latin American education experts. The renowned Mexican educator Eulalia Guzmán had been invited by Disney and the OIAA to advise on Disney’s literacy films, four shorts on health topics that aimed at teaching the audience to write. Guzmán had a lot of experience in literacy programs for illiterate adults, as those had long been a priority of the Mexican Ministry of Public Education for which she was working.Footnote ⁷⁷ Against the resistance of her US American colleagues, she drafted detailed scripts for Disney. Those were partly followed but altered in a way that was much to Guzmán’s discontent. In an article in the Mexican newspaper El Universal, she lashed out about the resulting educational movies, which were simply inadequate in her eyes. In addition, she deplored that her contributions were completely omitted, as the films stated in the beginning that “the lessons were elaborated by US teachers and the US government to teach the people of Latin America.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Guzmán’s critique aimed at the delicate topic of Latin American sovereignty and US ignorance toward Latin Americans, and she caused a small scandal that ultimately led to the OIAA’s withdrawal of the four literacy films.Footnote ⁷⁹

The case of the literacy films reveals the fine line between successful US propaganda and offending Latin American sentiment. Disney’s “educational films” aimed at improving the lives of their audiences and thereby strengthening positive views on the United States, exactly as Robert S. Carr had outlined in his report from 1942.Footnote ⁸⁰ But the strengthening of positive views was the priority, which is why the literacy films stressed the contribution of US teachers but omitted that of a Mexican educator. As most of Disney’s health films made no direct reference to the United States, their propagandistic value had to be ensured through prologues and epilogues starring Mickey Mouse. It was argued that, through these, “the people who will benefit from the films may realize their origin and appreciate the contirbution [sic!] which the people of the United States are making to the betterment of the peoples of the Hemisphere and to the health and prosperity of the Americas.”Footnote ⁸¹

Distribution and evaluation

It was the “common cause” of the OIAA, Disney, and RKO Radio Pictures, the distributor of Disney’s movies, to get as many people to the movies as possible.Footnote ⁸² In a letter to Disney, OIAA Vice-president Russell Pierce offered the whole range of promotional support. This included their monthly magazine En Guardia, with a circulation of 750,000 copies, and an air mail service reaching around 1,800 Latin American newspapers and radio stations, as well as excellent contacts to different magazines.Footnote ⁸³ Publications such as the Mexican railroad journal Ferronales reported proudly that Walt Disney had visited Mexico and would produce a new film set in Mexico, starring a Mexican rooster called Panchito Pistolas.Footnote ⁸⁴ Apart from feeding such stories to Latin American media outlets, the OIAA also organized radio interviews and even produced a free comic book to promote the Disney films.Footnote ⁸⁵

The OIAA supported US studios not only with promotional activities in the distribution of their cinema films but also with financial means to produce additional copies of the movies. Disney benefitted from such funds and produced excess film copies for the Latin American market.Footnote ⁸⁶ To secure the widest cinematic distribution possible, the OIAA even reached an agreement with the major US studios to show films “considered unusually valuable” in as many Latin American cinemas as possible. This meant that the studios would distribute films produced by their competitors through their channels or even show them in their own cinemas. To incentivize the studios further, the OIAA also offered to take on the costs of dubbing the films into Spanish and Portuguese.Footnote ⁸⁷ The agreement between the OIAA and the studios is a clear example of the very close cooperation between the US government and private companies in the propaganda effort toward Latin America.

On the basis of the numbers of the studios, the OIAA estimated that 15 million people would attend Latin American cinemas weekly in 1942.Footnote ⁸⁸ To get a better idea of the habits of Latin American movie-goers, the OIAA relied on its regional coordination committees and US consulates. This is especially well documented for Mexico, where US consulates prepared detailed reports on the cinemas in their respective cities. Vice-consul Henry A. Hoyt reported on the port town of Manzanillo, with its two cinemas with a combined capacity of 2,000 people. Hoyt considered the movies “the principal form of entertainment” in town and described how people would flock to the movie houses about two or three times a week. Most of the visitors were part of the working class, and many could not read. Therefore, they preferred dubbed US cartoons or Mexican films over the subtitled US feature films. Of less concern was the quality of the movies, as the locals were used to old reels of poor quality that only came to Manzanillo 6 months or even 1 year after the movies had premiered in Mexico City. Hoyt also described how Disney movies were the most popular of the US films reaching the town.Footnote ⁸⁹ Other OIAA reports suggested similar tendencies for all Latin America.

Still, cinematic distribution was not enough to reach all the sectors of the Latin American population, as it was limited to cities. To reach people without access to cinemas or to target specific groups, the OIAA established the 16mm program, named after the format of portable movie projectors. Film screenings with mobile projectors to reach remote areas were nothing new; Soviet film trains had existed since the 1920s, and German and US pharmaceuticals already did commercial film tours in Latin America when the OIAA started its program.Footnote ⁹⁰ However, the OIAA would so on a new scale. Of the 30 Disney movies produced under contracts with the OIAA, 20 were shown exclusively in the 16mm format in Latin America. Another four, the so-called war shorts, were shown in this format 4 months after they had premiered in cinemas.Footnote ⁹¹ Not only did using mobile projectors mean expanding the spatial reach of US propaganda, but it also contributed to the breakthrough of the 16 mm format and mobile projectors, which later in the war were also used for war bond campaigns in the Unites States and would revolutionize class rooms in the postwar period.Footnote ⁹² By May 1945, the OIAA’s 16mm program comprised of hundreds of employees, 326 mobile projectors, and 69 trucks for transport to remote areas.Footnote ⁹³

The 16mm program was organized by countries, and it often worked in collaboration with private US companies and local governments. In Colombia, the OIAA employed a total of 35 people—2 managers, 1 secretary, 17 projectionists, and 15 assistant projectionists to run the program. But it also relied on the services of the Sidney Ross Company to get the movies to hard-to-reach areas.Footnote ⁹⁴ OIAA local committees in other countries also worked with Sidney Ross, which belonged to the US pharmaceutical company Sterling Products and did commercial film tours all over Latin America for advertising purposes. Additionally, the OIAA cooperated with local carriers, such as the national railroads of Chile and Colombia or bus and boat companies in Uruguay and Argentina, to get the widest coverage possible. The collaboration in the spreading of the propaganda even extended to local politicians, as mayors sought after the free movie exhibitions to take credit for them. They invited the OIAA projectionist teams and provided for the transportation, as a report from Brazil reveals.Footnote ⁹⁵ In sum, the 16mm program and Disney’s films could not have had the reach they had without the crucial support of these local actors.

While local politicians hoped to profit from individual screenings, national governments collaborated with the OIAA and Disney on a larger scale to pursue their own propaganda goals. In Brazil, many of the film screening were jointly organized with the Ministry of Press and Propaganda, which worked closely with the OIAA to advance United States–Brazilian partnership.Footnote ⁹⁶ In Mexico, the powerful interior minister and later president Miguel Alemán desired the strengthening of the Mexican film industry and control over it. With the OIAA, he successfully negotiated US support in the form of machinery, covert financing, and expertise for Mexican studios, even against the wishes of Hollywood and the US ambassador in Mexico.Footnote ⁹⁷ In return, and not without self-interest, Alemán embraced the popular Walt Disney publicly and supported the proliferation of his OIAA films personally. After the shorts of Disney’s Health for the Americas series had been shown to him, he promised government-imposed screenings in all Mexican cinemas, in addition to support with the 16mm showings.Footnote ⁹⁸ In Mexico, those were partly handled by the Ministry of Public Education, which took care that it would also get credit for the Disney movies it showed in its schools.Footnote ⁹⁹ Latin American support for the OIAA’s 16mm program was thus not selfless, but rather a calculated embrace of a seemingly popular product.

Government support for 16mm was not as extensive everywhere as in Mexico and Brazil though, and the main share of the screenings lay with OIAA officials and local employees. A look at Bolivia helps provide a better idea how the 16mm program worked in the field. The Bolivian 16mm program is especially well documented thanks to the extensive and quite literary reports by the local coordination committee president Kenneth Wasson. He described how Bolivia was no priority for cinematic distribution. It had only few cinemas, and most US film reels to reach Bolivia would already be 3–4 years old by the time they got there. Therefore, the 16mm program had huge potential in his eyes. Motion picture tours would reach many rural areas, where people would see movies for the first time.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

In December 1943, Wasson accompanied such a motion picture tour to the town of Sorata to the north of La Paz. When the party, consisting of Wasson, two Chilean projectionists, and the wife of one of the projectionists, arrived in Sorata, the electric power supply of the town was interrupted. With the permission of the local authorities, they decided to act and restore the supply, as the film screening depended on electricity. Wasson considered the restoration of the power line and the subsequent screening a great success “from a propaganda and goodwill standpoint.” He wrote, “I heard almost as much favorable comment on the speedy restoration of the electric power service as I did about the movies. It [the restoration] was generally regarded as some sort of miracle—a kind of Yankee miracle.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Still, Wasson felt a need to justify such costly screenings to rural audiences largely made up of “Indians and mestizos who cannot be considered as important or decisive factors in the Bolivian public thought or opinion.”Footnote ¹⁰² Although they did not have a say in current Bolivian politics, they could become a factor in the future. “In such a case it would be a distinct advantage to us that they hold a favorable attitude toward the United States. These showings, then, may perhaps be justified—if on no other grounds—as a hedge against revolution.”Footnote ¹⁰³

However, the most important screenings in Bolivia were not those in rural communities such as Sorata but the weekly performances at the Colegio Militar. Wasson pointed out that the cadets from the country’s best families would form the future ruling elite, if things in Bolivia would continue to function as they had in the past. “Reaching these boys at an impressionable age and creating in their minds a favorable attitude toward the United States seems to me a very worthwhile accomplishment.” In addition to the young cadets, the films were also watched by some of the officers, who would slowly abandon their pro-German stance thanks to Allied victories and the Bolivian entry into the war.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Disney films were especially sought after by the military audience. A note on a screening in a Bolivian barrack reads succinctly: “This group is requesting more Walt Disney pictures.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The same was true for Sorata, where Disney’s Der Fuehrer’s Face was shown on request of the mayor.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The admiration of Disney even extended to the Bolivian ambassador in Washington, who regarded Donald Duck as “one of the most important figures that have visited Bolivia.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ These cases coincide with an earlier assessment by Wasson that Disney movies were especially sought after by the Bolivian audiences.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Conclusively, the look at Bolivia shows the popularity of Disney propaganda films there, and how the OIAA targeted a wide spectrum of Bolivian audiences, ranging from rural communities to the current and future elites of the country. But it also reveals how these audiences were not passive receivers and had their own ideas of which movies they wanted to watch, in many cases Disney cartoons. Reports such as the ones by Kenneth Wasson from Bolivia were one way of assessing the distribution of the movies and the effects they had on their audience. But the OIAA also relied on a standardized system of documentation for such evaluation of its film propaganda campaign in Latin America.

Every film screening that formed part of the 16mm program was recorded and evaluated. The projectionists registered the location, the type of audience, and their number in a standardized form. In a separate sheet, they reported the general reaction of the audience to each of the movies shown by ticking off one of four to five categories ranging from excellent to bad. But the responsibility of gauging reactions to the movies did not lie exclusively with the projectionists, as the OIAA applied other quantitative and qualitative measures to that purpose as well. By measuring the reach of the propaganda films and the reactions they provoked, the OIAA hoped to assess the effects of its propaganda campaign.

OIAA statistics reveal that the propaganda films of the 16mm program were shown to a wide spectrum of people. For Bolivia, this was already indicated in Kenneth Wasson’s reports and can be confirmed by the statistics. Screenings for general audiences, but also in schools, factories, private clubs, hospitals, or barracks, were listed.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ This picture presented itself similarly all over Latin America. Screenings in Argentina were held in schools, private clubs, churches, or hospitals and libraries. Typically, 100–200 people attended such screenings. And despite tense relations between neutral Argentina and the United States, the OIAA could also show movies to Argentinian officers in the Ministerio de Marina in November 1944.Footnote ¹¹⁰ As already stressed in the Bolivian case, the targeting of elites, particularly military officials, was an important part of the distribution strategy, and the fact that Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas watched OIAA movies in his presidential palace was celebrated as a success.Footnote ¹¹¹

The statistics on the screenings all over Latin America were compiled into monthly summaries, indicating the totals of screenings and attendance numbers per film. Thanks to these figures, the reach of the 16mm program can be quantified, and the most watched pictures can be identified. Of the top four of all films listed, three were from Disney. Der Fuehrer’s Face, The Winged Scourge, and The Grain that Built a Hemisphere all had attendance numbers well over 4 million people by June 1945, and the figures for other Disney shorts were in the millions as well. The 4,974,610 individuals who had seen Der Fuehrer’s Face through the 16mm program amounted to 3.9% of the population of all Latin America.Footnote ¹¹² But its audience must have been considerably larger still, as the short also generated “biggest record sales” in Latin American cinemas.Footnote ¹¹³ The Latin American box office receipts cannot be provided, but historians with access to the Disney Archives maintain that the feature films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros were very successful in Latin America, while not performing that well in the United States.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Overall, they brought in 1.2 and 3.4 million dollars, respectively.Footnote ¹¹⁵ These revenues exceeded the production costs by far and hence indicate that Disney’s collaboration with the OIAA was quite lucrative. In sum, Disney’s pictures had a wide reach, and the collaboration with the OIAA proved to be profitable and good promotion for the brand.

The OIAA did not want to measure just the reach of its propaganda but also the effect the propaganda had on Latin Americans. To that end, several quantitative and qualitative measures to gauge audience reactions were implemented. Audience reaction was largely equated with effect. Again, it was social scientists such as Leonard Doob and Hadley Cantril who designed these methods. Leonard Doob implemented the general reaction sheets that the projectionists would have to tick off after each screening, based on their perception of the audience’s reactions to the films.Footnote ¹¹⁶ A large sample of reaction sheets from Mexico reveals that usually only the highest categories were ticked off.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Some reasonable doubt to such widespread euphoria seems appropriate, and such doubt is nurtured by observations of Herbert Cervin from the OIAA coordination committee in Mexico. In a letter to Nelson Rockefeller, he described how the projectionists “usually put anything that suits them” in the reaction sheets. He himself witnessed a screening with poor audience reaction that the projectionist would tick off as “Excellent.” He concluded, “I do not think that the Motion Picture Division can base sound judgement from these improperly filled reaction blanks.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ The reaction sheets were the most extensive method to measure audience reactions, and they depended on local projectionists, who probably had an interest in reporting positive reactions, as their jobs depended on the OIAA’s conviction that its propaganda was successful. Consequently, the reliability of these reaction sheets regarding actual audience reactions is very limited.

The reaction sheets were not the only method to measure reactions and the effect of the propaganda, though. The OIAA also planned to make “systematic reports on sentiments in the Other American Republics,” which meant widespread interviews and polling. Despite confidentially discussing the implementation of such a program with George Gallup and Hadley Cantril, the two most prominent pollsters in the United States, widespread polling was never implemented.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Hadley Cantril’s Motion Pictures Medellín Survey, which assessed the cinema habits in that city, remained an exception. Some measures that were carried out were occasional interviews with movie-goers and the analysis of local newspapers to assess the reception of the movies by the press, which was implemented by Leonard Doob.Footnote ¹²⁰ However, the scope and the reliability of theses reaction measurement methods seemed quite limited—especially as indicators for the effects of the propaganda films on the people, which was the actual goal of measuring reactions.

In practice, the OIAA relied heavily on the reports of its coordination committees for the evaluation of the propaganda films. For these reports, committee members would often use a mix of some of the discussed methods and enhance the results with their personal evaluation. In fact, the personal evaluation often lay at the core of these reports. An example already discussed are the reports from Bolivia by Kenneth Wasson, who saw the 16mm program as a very effective means to influence the Bolivian public.Footnote ¹²¹ His colleagues in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay seemed to agree on the effectiveness of the film propaganda. In a report from Brazil, the residents of a remote village were quoted exclaiming, “here is an example of how the Americans know the way to use propaganda” in regard to the 16mm program.Footnote ¹²² Radio pioneer Herbert Cervin from the Mexican coordination committee concluded that “films fix the attention upon both subject and goodwill message more than can be done via newspapers, radio or magazines.”Footnote ¹²³ In a regional conference of the River Plate countries committees, the attendants stated that “it was unanimously agreed that this [16mm program] was one of the most effective efforts of our information campaign and has proven extremely valuable in all countries.”Footnote ¹²⁴ These people in charge of overseeing and coordinating the OIAA’s propaganda campaign in the field agreed, on the basis of their personal experience and impression, on film propaganda as the most effective measure to influence the Latin American public.

The committees also reported specifically on the effectiveness of the Disney films. Journalist Ray Joseph from the Argentinian coordination committee, who initially was very critical about the OIAA’s collaboration with Disney, concluded in September 1943 that Saludos Amigos was “undoubtedly the best inter-American film effort to date.”Footnote ¹²⁵ The Uruguayan committee reported in the same vein.Footnote ¹²⁶ In regard to Disney’s educational films, the committees from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina demanded that they “be enlarged—they are proving very popular and are doing an excellent job in every field they cover.”Footnote ¹²⁷ Another indicator for Walt Disney’s popularity in Latin America can be seen in the receptions the cartoon tycoon enjoyed there during his OIAA-sponsored visits. Be it in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, or Mexico, Disney was always received by huge crowds and the heads of state, which embraced the father of Mickey Mouse to profit from his popularity. Disney even received the Ordem Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sul in Brazil and the Aguila Azteca in Mexico, the highest orders for a foreigner in these countries.Footnote ¹²⁸ These positive reactions and commercial success were equated, or at least seen as key, to assess the effect of the Disney propaganda movies.

The equation of a happy audience with successful propaganda was widely shared in the OIAA, but it did also lead to some internal critique. The most prominent critic was Don Francisco, the head of the Department of Information Services of the OIAA. After a visit to Bogotá, where he witnessed a screening with a master of ceremonies, a comedian, and a small orchestra, all paid for by the OIAA, he questioned whether such expenses to entertain the audience were justified. He remarked, “I think it is true of our whole information program in Colombia, as well as other countries, that too much attention is being given to developing and pleasing the audience, and not enough to getting over a message that will help the United States.”Footnote ¹²⁹ Another indicator for how entertaining the audiences was prioritized is exemplified by the fact that some of the most shown movies in the whole 16mm program were three Goofy pictures without any propagandistic content.Footnote ¹³⁰ The inclusion of these purely entertaining shorts in the 16mm program was probably due to the lack of Disney propaganda movies in the early stages of the program, and the simultaneous high demand for Disney cartoons from the audiences. Taking Don Francisco’s worries seriously, the possibility remains that the OIAA’s propaganda film program was just free entertainment for Latin Americans and successful branding for Walt Disney at the cost of the United States but without the desired propaganda effects.Footnote ¹³¹

The US evaluation of the program in the imminent postwar period did not reflect such a possibility. In his Master’s thesis from 1949, World War II veteran Melvin Greenstadt wrote that “it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Disney’s work in the OCIAA program.” As his cartoons had “such universal appeal,” it would have been “doubtful that any other approach could have succeeded in reaching and influencing the vast audiences his films did.”Footnote ¹³² Eduardo Villaseñor in turn doubted that the OIAA had achieved its goal of influencing vast population strata in Latin America. The director of the National Bank of Mexico was a supporter of the Good Neighbor Policy, but he criticized the United States for having failed to convince the Latin American people that cooperation with the United States was beneficial for them. Consequently, ordinary Latin Americans would remain skeptical or even hostile toward the United States.Footnote ¹³³ Although Villaseñor did not address the film program or Disney specifically in his article, his assessment stands in stark contrast to that of Nelson Rockefeller, who remained a supporter of the use of the mass media for US foreign policy and recalled the collaboration with Disney as “the most effective work in inter-American relations.”Footnote ¹³⁴

Although Latin America lost importance in US foreign policy and the OIAA and its film propaganda campaign were discontinued in 1946, the United States went on to use film for its now globalized propaganda programs. Many of the OIAA’s employees were transferred to the State Department, where they developed the peace-time “overseas information activities” that would take off in the ensuing Cold War.Footnote ¹³⁵ Walt Disney also reflected positively on his work for the government and took it as inspiration to successfully expand the work of his studio in the realm of education.Footnote ¹³⁶ He would even continue to do films on governmental request such as the “Disneyland” episode Our Friend the Atom (1957) or represent the United States on the international scene.Footnote ¹³⁷ Social scientists such as Harold Lasswell or Hadley Cantril would continue to shape the US approach to the use of the mass media as heads of big state-sponsored communication studies projects, and some of the Disney films produced for the OIAA were continually shown as part of the global film campaigns of the United States Information Service (USIS).Footnote ¹³⁸ Consequently, Seth Fein stresses that the OIAA’s wartime program was the basis for an institutionalization of the use of mass media by Washington in the Cold War.Footnote ¹³⁹ The positively evaluated OIAA propaganda film program with Disney at its center then was a leading cause for the continued and expanded use of entertaining or educational films and mobile projectors as tools of US foreign policy.

When the United States reinvigorated its Latin American film program in the 1950s, it did so in a post–Good Neighbor Policy setting and under the pretext of fighting communism. USIS contracted Disney veteran Ernesto Terrazas, who created new anticommunist cartoons starring Manolin, a rooster that strongly resembled Panchito Pistolas from The Three Caballeros.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ But also Disney went on to use its figures to promote ideas in line with US interests in Latin America, ultimately provoking backlash there. In their 1971 classic Como leer al Pato Donald, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart pointed out that Disney comic book characters propagated US imperialist ideology to Latin American kids. Their book was a sweeping success in Latin America and found a global audience critical of Disney and the United States. In the first author’s homeland, Chile, however, Como leer al Pato Donald was shortly thereafter forbidden and burnt on live television by the US-backed Pinochet regime.Footnote ¹⁴¹ For many Latin Americans, Disney and the United States had almost become synonymous, for better or worse.