Editing Saludos Amigos (section)

==Background==
[[File:OCIAA-Nelson-Rockefeller.jpg|thumb|left|[[Nelson Rockefeller]], [[Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs|Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs]] (1940)]]
In early 1941, before U.S. entry into [[World War II]], the [[United States Department of State]] commissioned a Disney goodwill tour of South America, intended to lead to a movie to be shown in the US, [[Central America|Central]], and [[South America]] as part of the [[Good Neighbor Policy]]. This was being done because several Latin American governments had close ties with [[Nazi Germany]],<ref name=grupo/> and the US government wanted to counteract those ties. [[Mickey Mouse]] and other Disney characters were popular in Latin America, and Walt Disney acted as ambassador. The tour, facilitated by [[Nelson Rockefeller]], who had recently been appointed as [[Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs|Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs]] (CIAA), took Disney and a group of roughly twenty composers, artists, technicians, etc. from his studio to South America, mainly to [[Brazil]] and [[Argentina]], but also to [[Chile]], [[Bolivia]] and [[Peru]].<ref name="Dale2007">{{Cite journal| last=Adams| first=Dale| title=Saludos Amigos: Hollywood and FDR's Good Neighbor Policy| journal=Quarterly Review of Film & Video| volume=24| issue=3| year=2007| pages=289–295| issn=1050-9208| doi=10.1080/10509200500486395| s2cid=191453804}}</ref>

The film itself was given federal loan guarantees, because the Disney studio had over-expanded just before European markets were closed to them by the war, and because Disney was struggling with labor unrest at the time (including [[Disney animators' strike|a strike that was underway]] at the time the goodwill journey began).<ref name=grupo/>

The film included live-action documentary sequences featuring footage of modern Latin American cities with skyscrapers and fashionably dressed residents. This surprised many contemporary US viewers, who associated such images only with US and European cities, and contributed to a changing impression of Latin America.<ref name=Dale2007/> Film historian Alfred Charles Richard Jr. has commented that ''Saludos Amigos'' "did more to cement a community of interest between peoples of the Americas in a few months than the State Department had in fifty years."<ref>Richard, Alfred Charles Jr. Censorship and Hollywood's Hispanic Image: An Interpretive Filmography, 1936–1955. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993, p274, cited in {{Cite journal| last=Adams| first=Dale| title=Saludos Amigos: Hollywood and FDR's Good Neighbor Policy| journal=Quarterly Review of Film & Video| volume=24| issue=3| year=2007| pages=289–295| issn=1050-9208| doi=10.1080/10509200500486395| s2cid=191453804}}</ref>

The film also inspired Chilean cartoonist [[René Ríos Boettiger]] to create [[Condorito]], one of Latin America's most ubiquitous cartoon characters. Ríos perceived that the character ''Pedro'', a small, incapable airplane, was a slight to Chileans and created a comic that could supposedly rival Disney's comic characters.<ref>{{Cite web |last=updated |first=Lili Loofbourow last |date=2018-01-17 |title=The Sterilization of Condorito |url=https://theweek.com/articles/747423/sterilization-condorito |access-date=2024-04-04 |website=theweek |language=en}}</ref>

'''Plot'''

The film features segments of 5 countries in South America: Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. Each country has its own segment except for Bolivia and Peru, because both countries are represented in the Lake Titicaca segment.