Produced with the newly formed Office of Inter-American Affairs, Walt Disney Studio's animated film The Three Cabelleros (1945) presented stellar technical achievements, blending live action and animation in color on a scale never achieved before, and putting the film years ahead of its time. Rooted in the World War II era, the film was one of a series of features, beginning with Saludos Amigos (1943), attempting to celebrate diplomatic relations between the United States and Latin America by erasing the stereotyped images of Latin American culture and people common in Hollywood cinema: the untrustworthy Mexican womanizing Latin lover "guerillero"; his female counterpart, the lascivious Latin woman; and the stupid, lazy "poncho."

These films are also noted for being the first concerted effort to use animation as an instructional medium for popular audiences and as an effort to atone for what Eric Smoodin in Animating Culture describes...