This poster, showing two arms raising hats in unison, one a Mexican sombrero and the other an “Uncle Sam” style top hat bearing the stars and stripes, was intended to encourage the support of Hispanic Americans during World War II and heal social divisions. It was one of four commissioned in January 1943 from the Mexican-born artist Leon Helguera by the Foreign Language Division of the Office of War Information (OWI), a government agency established in June 1942 to control the production of government information and wartime propaganda. After the Sleepy Lagoon Murder in California in August 1942 involving the death of twenty-two year old José Díaz and the subsequent arrest and trial of twenty-two young Mexican Americans (one in which they were denied due process), racial tensions in the region were extremely elevated. Reports of anti-American radio broadcasts to Latin America by the Axis powers who wanted to exploit the situation in their favor further motivated the OWI and the Co-Ordinator of Intra-American Affairs (CIAA) to take action. Helguera had moved to the United States as a teenager in 1916 and ultimately became a commercial artist, working at Fisher-McKenzie Inc. in Manhattan. His “United Nations” postage stamp for the OWI was released by the United States Post Office in the same month as this poster in January 1943.