# Project Pedro

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'''Project Pedro''' was a secretly funded program under the [United States Information Agency](/source/United_States_Information_Agency) during the 1950s to create [newsreels](/source/newsreels) in [Mexico](/source/Mexico).<ref name="fein">Fein, Seth. "New Empire into Old: Making Mexican Newsreels the Cold War Way." ''Diplomatic History'' 28 (2004): 703-748.</ref> The program was a clandestine [public relations](/source/public_relations) campaign to spread [propaganda](/source/propaganda) portraying the [United States](/source/United_States) positively and [Communism](/source/Communism) negatively, in an effort to change the Mexican public's attitude toward Communism as part of the [Cold War](/source/Cold_War). 
Projects with similar objectives were carried out in other Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador.<ref name=":0" /> 

The project was publicly operated in part by a former film executive named Richard K. Tompkins<ref name=":0">{{cite book|title=In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War|last1=Joseph|first1=Gilbert M.|last2=Spenser|first2=Daniela|publisher=Duke University Press|pages=171–213}}</ref> who had produced [anti-communist](/source/anti-communist) [animated cartoon](/source/animated_cartoon)s and [film](/source/film)s in Mexico. Tompkins allowed the USIA to influence newsreel content while having no official trace to production. Since Mexican citizens owned the rest of the [production company](/source/production_company) creating the newsreels, the USIA was not required to publicly disclose its involvement in the project.<ref name="fein"></ref>

Project Pedro began production in February 1957 and by the end of that year, its newsreels were shown in several hundred [movie theaters](/source/movie_theaters) throughout Mexico. Several major [corporations](/source/corporations) [sponsored](/source/Sponsorship_(commercial)) the project, including the manufacturers of [Corona](/source/Corona_(beer)) and [Coca-Cola](/source/The_Coca-Cola_Company). Due to concerns about Project Pedro's high cost and efficacy, the USIA terminated funding for the program in September 1961.<ref name="fein"></ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}
*LaFeber, Walter. ''America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006.'' {{ISBN|978-0-07-353466-4}}

Category:United States government propaganda organizations
Category:Cold War history of the United States

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