“Saludos amigos, a fond greeting to you!” Those lyrics were sung in the 42-minute feature film Saludos Amigos, which was released in theaters on February 6, 1943. Four mucho entertaining animated segments were introduced, “Lake Titicaca,” “Pedro,” “El Gaucho Goofy”, and “Aquarela do Brasil,” which featured Donald Duck and a newcomer to Disney animation, Brazilian parrot, José Carioca. Live-action footage of a South American goodwill tour with Walt Disney and some of his staff tied together the animated segments. The film was produced at a time when Nelson Rockefeller’s agency, the Coordinator for Inter-America Affairs, asked filmmakers to include Latin American themes in their films as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. As Walt discussed in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview, “I took a staff and we set up headquarters in Rio, we also went and set up a studio in the Argentine, we went over to Chile and some of my artists, we divided our party, and some of them went up to Peru, and when we came back I made these four short subjects…. These four films were more or less put together and they went out in the theater. It was one of those things that they thought Disney needed a subsidy, but fortunately that little thing went out and it did a heck of a business and the United States Government didn’t have to put up one nickel.”
