Birds of a feather?: Lessons on U.S. cultural diplomacy from Walt Disney during the Good Neighbor Policy

ABSTRACT

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration sought to improve relations between with Latin America and strengthen the Inter-American system through the Good Neighbor Policy. In 1940, to combat the spread of Axis influence, the Roosevelt administration formed the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). Tasked with improving perceptions of the United States in Latin America and of Latin America in the United States, the CIAA worked closely with U.S. organizations and businesses to achieve these ends. One frequently cited success story of this period was sending Walt Disney to South America and its resulting films. This paper places the role of the CIAA and Walt Disney Studios within the broader strategic context of the Good Neighbor Policy. In addition, this paper attempts to glean lessons from the CIAA-Disney partnership that epitomize best practices and potential pitfalls in U.S.-Latin American Cultural Diplomacy.

KEYWORDS:

• U.S. foreign policy
• public diplomacy
• Latin America
• World War II
• Walt Disney
• Good Neighbor Policy
• film

Acknowledgments

The author is immensely grateful to the participants of the 2018 MALOKA CLAS Tri-University conference at Florida International University (March 2018) and at the Florida Political Science Association Conference at the University of Tampa (March 2019) who provided feedback on preliminary presentations of this paper.

Disclosure statement

Some of the ideas presented in this paper were previously presented by the author (2019) in an op-ed for The Geopolitics entitled ‘Donald Duck Diplomacy’ published on the 75th Anniversary of the international release of The Three Caballeros.

Notes

1. The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) was originally founded as the Office for the Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations Between the American Republics (OCCCRBAR), but was typically referred to as the CIAA, or simply as the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA) (Cramer and Prutsch 2012). Different scholars use these different names interchangeably. However, for the purpose of this paper, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs will be referred to as such and abbreviated as CIAA.

2. It is important to note that although the FDR administration is often credited with the development of the Good Neighbor Policy, some of the elements of the Good Neighbor Policy emerged prior to FDR taking office during the Hoover administration. In fact, in the same issue of Foreign Affairs where FDR started to lay out the Good Neighbor Policy from a Democratic viewpoint, Ogden L. Mills (1928) also referred to a similar strategy from a Republican position.

3. It is important to note that some leaders within Latin America assumed that this was the original meaning of the Monroe Doctrine when first announced in 1823 (Domínguez 1999).

4. In one notable case, Dr. Enrique Sanchez de Lozada, a Bolivian advisor to the CIAA criticized a documentary series that attempted to highlight the similarities in the Americas for over simplifying the diversity of the region in their attempt to highlight similarities (Bender 2012). Lozada would later go on to work with Disney Studios on its educational projects (Kaufman 2009).

5. This team consisted of Norm Ferguson, Ted Sears, Bill Cottrell, Webb Smith, Frank Thomas, Herb Ryman, Lee Blair, Mary Blair, Jim Bordero, Charles Wolcott, Larry Lansburgh, Jack Miller, Jack Cutting, John Rose, and Janet Martin (Kaufman 2009).

6. The same who had previously joked that another U.S. good will tour would be considered an invasion of Brazil.

7. This did not include a story, but rather replaced the title of the newspaper.

8. It is important to note that not all of the film footage featured in the film Saludos Amigos (1942) was actually from the Disney trip. Many of the scenes were recreated from Disney Studios in California or used footage from different travelogues such as National Geographic (Kaufman 2009).

9. It is important to note that, in an attempt to make Saludos Amigos as inclusive of multiple Latin American countries as possible, Disney Studios actively choose to have Donald Duck visit Lake Titicaca which is on the Peruvian-Bolivian border and claim that he was visiting the ‘Land of the Incas’ rather than any particular country (Kaufman 2009). The CIAA regularly encouraged projects that were inclusive of many Latin American countries so as to avoid offending any of the countries in the region (Bender 2012).

10. The full list of films include: Cleanliness Brings Health (1944), Defense Against Invasion (1943), Environmental Sanitation (1945), Hookworm (1944), How Disease Travels (1945), The Human Body (1945), Infant Care (1944), Insects as Carriers of Disease (1944), Planning for Good Eating (1945), Tuberculosis (1944), Water- Friend or Enemy (1943), What is Disease?/The Unseen Enemy (1945), and The Winged Scourge (1943).

11. These included José Come Bien (1945), La Historia de José (1945), La Historia de Ramón (1945), and Ramón Está Enfermo (1945).

12. While true that by 1941, Donald Duck was more popular than Mickey Mouse or any of the other classic Disney characters (Kaufman 2009), the fact that Disney Studios chose to use Donald Duck in military propaganda remains important, particularly when simultaneously using him as the ‘U.S.-Ambassador’ to Latin America in Saludos Amigos.

13. It was featured in a separate Disney Film, Melody Time, in 1948.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Ratzlaff

Adam Ratzlaff is a PhD Candidate in International Relations as well as an Editor & Analyst with Diplomatic Courier and the World in 2050.