W W ALT DISNEY LANDED IN BRAZIL in 1941. He was accompanied by 18 of his work colleagues: artists, musicians and script writers. For 10 weeks they toured South America, hunting for landscapes, characters, colours and sounds. The adventure was not an innocent one. War was devastating Europe, and the U.S was on the side of the Allies. Nazi propaganda worked efficiently in Latin America. The United States ought to do something, and President Roosevelt decided that Donald Duck was the perfect antidote to the propaganda of Goebbels. The result of this journey was two cartoon films nominated for Oscars and an artistic treasure trove in the form of sketches, notes, musical scores and Latino inspired characters. In the spring of 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor was yet to come, but the U.S entry into the war was reckoned to be imminent. Latin America had come off badly in the stock market crash of ‘29. “Faced with social instability and the advance of communism, repressive governments emerged that tried to rule in a climate of violence. The Latin American countries were polarized between sympathizers of the Allies and the Nazis”, explains Guillermo Pariente, administrator of the blog 2GM (2gmblog.blogspot.com) dedicated to the Second World War. In 1942, at a conference in Río de Janeiro, the foreign ministers of the Latin American countries declared themselves to be against the demands of the U.S. to break off relations with the Axis powers. Finally, although some took longer than others, all of them united with the Allies.
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The Nazi propaganda devised by Goebbels had extended its tentacles through Latin America ever since the start of the conflict. Guillermo Pariente explains that the Nazis poured out magazines, books , radio programmes and films to influence the Latin American countries. “Berlín transferred a very large amount of money to Buenos Aires for propaganda”, he explains. That was not the only way that the Germans tried to spread their influence in the Americas: the beautiful actress and Nazi agent, Hilda Krüger, who for a while was Goebbels’ lover, as well as making several films in Mexico managed to seduce two members of the administration and pass on confidential information to Berlín. Hitler was interested in Mexican petroleum and his captivating agent worked efficiently for him, winning the love of the Under Secretary at the Treasury, Ramón Beteta, and the Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, Miguel Alemán.
The good neighbour
To counter the Nazi attempts to influence in South America, the U.S Department of State launched a “policy of being good neighbours”. Actors such as Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, and film makers like John Ford and Orson Welles were sent on tours to Latin America. The Chilean journalist, Jaime Huerta, explains that it was Nelson Rockefeller, the Coordinator at the Office of Inter-American Affairs, who proposed that Walt Disney should play a part in the campaign. The U.S Government pledged itself to financing four films “in support of being good neighbours and cultural interchange”. Walt Disney accepted, but he didn’t limit himself to high fives: on his return from Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, he brought with him cases full of artistic material that would give rise to two films: Hello Friends (1943) and The Three Caballeros (1944). That art at the service of propaganda is still art is demonstrated by the impressive drawings that Walt’s men produced during those weeks. In the documentary, South of the Border (1942), Disney said: “The visit resulted in a better understanding of
Walt Disney lived the adventure intensely, soaking up all the nuances of the Latin American cultures. In the photo he appears dressed as a cowboy, stroking a horse’s head. MUSEO DEL CINE PABLO C. DUCRÓS HICKEN
the art, music, folklore and humour of our Latin American friends, and in rich material and a source of inspiration for future cartoon stories”. The documentary Walt y el Grupo (Walt & the Group, 2008) shows the journey in all its depth. Its director, Ted Thomas, told Babylon: “The journey to the Latin American countries and the films they made as a result of it saved the Disney studios. The Second World War, financial problems and confrontations involving labour arguments between art-
ists, all of them together could have forced Disney to close down. The Latin American experience revived him artistically. Many of the friendships that came out of the trip lasted for the rest of his life.” Thomas underlines the influence that the journey had on Disney’s artists: “In the case of Mary Blair, her style changed completely. She found her own voice in Latin America. And this had a very fundamental influence on films like Alice in Wonderland”.