Saludos Amigos

Release Date: February 19, 1943

During World War II, the United States government was concerned about countries in South America sympathizing with the Nazis. Some support for the Nazis had already been expressed by some Central and South American countries, and the U.S. government wanted to offset that influence as much as possible. To do this, they recruited some prominent Americans to go on "goodwill tours" to Latin America. Walt Disney was one of the people who was paid to go on a tour, since his movies and cartoons were very popular among the people in South America. 

Walt and his entourage (who called themselves "El Grupo") visited several countries in Latin America. Rather than visit embassies and other places that distinguished guests from the United States might visit, Walt and El Grupo chose to immerse themselves in the culture of the regions they visited. From that goodwill tour came two movies, the first of which I will discuss in this post: Saludos Amigos.

Rather than being one long feature-length movie, Saludos Amigos is actually four smaller cartoons put together to make a movie less than 45-minutes long. The cartoons are connected with documentary-style storytelling, chronicling El Grupo's travel in South America. The animated sequences are spliced with live footage that El Grupo took during their travels.

At the time of this film, Donald Duck and Goofy were the two most popular Disney characters. With this in mind, both characters were used in the film. Donald Duck stars in the first cartoon about Lake Titicaca, and in the last cartoon about Brazil. The segment about Brazil also introduces a new character--Jose Carioca. Goofy stars in the third cartoon, demonstrating the gaucho lifestyle in Argentina. An airplane stars in the second cartoon, representing the mail planes that flew through the mountain passes in Chile.

The movie is a fun look at the culture in some areas of South America, as seen and represented by El Grupo. Of course, it was all given a classic Disney storytelling twist. The movies ended up being well received at home in the United States, and were also well received by the countries that were represented in the film.

Walt's goodwill mission was a success. It not only had the effect the government hoped for (turning sympathies toward the Allies instead of the Axis powers of World War II), but it also provided Walt and his team with some fresh ideas and successful movies. Walt later said the government ended up not needing to subsidize any of the journey because the movies that came from the goodwill tour paid for themselves.