Coordinator Of Inter-American Affairs Research Articles

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.

Knocking on America's door. Basque Foreign Politics in the US during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War (1936-1945)

Este artículo analiza la denominada estrategia atlantista y cómo fue puesta en práctica por el Gobierno Vasco en el exilio a través de dos grandes etapas: por un lado, las actividades de la delegación del Gobierno Vasco en Nueva York durante la Guerra Civil española, atendiendo a su origen, composición, actuación y relación con instituciones norteamericanas como la National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), el Departamento de Estado y sus diferentes agencias. Y, por otro, se estudian las labores de lobbying vascas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Un periodo clave, pues, como se verá en las siguientes páginas, durante aquellos años se produjo una colaboración efectiva entre las instituciones vascas y las agencias estadounidenses de la Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), la Office of Coordinator of Information (COI), la Office of Strategic Services (OSS) y el Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Entre « politique de bon voisinage » et films d'animation de propagande : Walt Disney s'en va-t-en guerre (1941-1948)

At a time, in the summer of 1941, when an unprecedented wave of social protest was threatening the very foundations of the Disney Empire and damaging it public image, Walt Disney was appointed an official « goodwill ambassador » by the Roosevelt Administration. His mission was to travel across Latin America and contribute to the political rapprochement between both Americas in order to obstruct the Nazis' propaganda machine. His mission's success was undisputable as it boosted the Pan-American agenda of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) — the United States international indirect film propaganda programs — while it also reinforced Walt Disney's already significant cultural influence in Latin America.

Ficção e política em tempo de guerra: o projeto tradutório estadunidense para a literatura brasileira (1943-1947)

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é analisar os projetos do Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs e seus colaboradores para a tradução da narrativa de ficção brasileira para o inglês no período de 1943 a 1947. Demonstrarei que esse projeto tinha um caráter pedagógico e produziu uma representação de Brasil agrário e atrasado em contraste com os Estados Unidos industrializados e modernos. Para fazê-lo, analisei os documentos do Departamento de Estado dos EUA, da American Library Association, do American Council of Learned Society e do arquivo pessoal de um dos tradutores participantes do projeto, Dudley Poore.

La fallida Operación Airedale. La OSS y el Servicio Vasco de Información contra la Alemania nazi / The Faulty Airedale Operation. The OSS and the Basque Intelligence Servive against the Nazi Germany

During World War II it took place an effective collaboration between the Basque institutions and the American agencies, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Army and the Coordinator of Inter American Affairs (CIAA). Throughout these years, the rulers of the Basque politics felt that the United States was an appealing partner in order to recover democracy over the Basque territory with their great involvement in World War II. In this article it is analyzed the Airedale Operation, one of the missions concerning the Basque Intelligence Service in America and its contacts with the FBI, the OSS and the American Army, and the collaboration projects with some of these agencies in France. In fact, in this study it is examined one of the missions in which took place the OSS and the Basque Intelligence Service to wipe out the last bastions of the Nazi Army at the end of World War II.

“The Advantages of Knowing How to Read and Write”: Literacy, Filmic Pedagogies, and the Hemispheric Projection of US Influence

During World War II, the US Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA) and the Walt Disney Company produced a series of educational films promoting literacy, hygiene, and American (US) values for distribution across the Americas. Through these films, literacy was to move across borders in service of inter-American cooperation. That movement, however, also reinscribed the distance between a modern, powerful, literate United States and a stagnant, resistant, illiterate “other America.” The program’s insistence on film as a pedagogical tool imagined the United States as a site of technical modernity in contrast to its American neighbors. Working in light of recent scholarship addressing how literacy controls and constrains movement, this essay considers the effects of literacy for literacy's others—in this case, the population of what the OIAA termed the “other American republics.” It highlights the American assumptions that circulated within the literacy films and became enmeshed with the reading and writing skills they claimed to provide. Examining how film moved literacy practice and ideology across national borders, this essay demonstrates how thoroughly the contexts and the media of literacy's movement shape the consequences of its transmission.

Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II by Darlene J. Sadlier (review)

Reviewed by: Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II by Darlene J. Sadlier Monica Rankin (bio) Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II. By Darlene J. Sadlier. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. Pp. 251. $55.00 cloth) The notions of soft power and cultural diplomacy have steadily attracted the attention of policymakers and diplomatic scholars over the past two decades. Although intellectual discussions of a more amiable approach to foreign policy are a relatively recent phenomenon, the growing body of scholarly literature demonstrates that such policy initiatives have many important historical precedents. Darlene J. Sadlier’s Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II takes the reader to a time when the use of soft power was a favored diplomatic tool. Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) operated exclusively in Latin America during the war years in an effort to foster unity and to safeguard security in the Western Hemisphere. As such, the agency offers a rare case study for scholars of foreign relations. Even during the era of the Good Neighbor Policy, the CIAA played a singular role in U.S. diplomacy. No such U.S. government agency existed before or since, and there was no other area of the world with such an all-encompassing U.S. bureau devoted to overseeing diplomatic issues. Sadlier argues that the CIAA offers a unique example of the U.S. government incorporating culture into its diplomatic strategies in meaningful ways. Sadlier lays out the concept of the “culture industry” as a framework for understanding the creation and operations of the CIAA (pp. 7–8). Borrowing from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, Sadlier considers various forms of culture production—namely film, radio, and print media—as standardized and formulaic expressions produced within a system of partnership between big business and big government. The State Department [End Page 145] Division of Cultural Relations, established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, served as a bridge between the privately led and philanthropic cultural-diplomacy initiatives of the early twentieth century and the more institutional government-led efforts that came to define the Cold War. That incipient attempt at promoting soft power reflected FDR’s commitment to cultural diplomacy and served as a springboard to the larger and more comprehensive Latin American program that emerged under the CIAA during the war. Sadlier seems to rely closely on the structures delineated in Dialectic of Enlightenment, as she organizes the chapters of Americans All according to the types of cultural expressions showcased by the study. Chapters on the CIAA divisions of motion pictures, radio, and press and publications are followed by a chapter devoted to museums, libraries, and the U.S. home front. This organizational structure serves her well since it represents some of the most important administrative divisions within the CIAA and it allows her to carry out a cultural analysis of various types of media messages in a systematic way. Relying largely on CIAA archival records, Sadlier demonstrates that film, radio, and print media became an instrumental part of the agency’s strategy to portray the United States in a way that would appeal to Latin Americans and to teach people in the United States about their neighbors to the south. She examines U.S. and Latin American–produced radio programs, CIAA generated news stories that appeared in Latin American newspapers, and special publications such as CIAA newsletters and En Guardia—the war magazine created specifically for a Latin American reading audience. Sadlier also describes various initiatives involving collaboration between artists, museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions throughout the hemisphere. Throughout the brief existence of the agency, CIAA representatives carried out extensive audience-reception surveys and often modified their approach to sharing wartime information based on the results of those studies. Despite some instances of cultural misunderstanding, Sadlier concludes that the cultural initiatives of the CIAA were generally [End Page 146] effective and helped to shape the way U.S. leaders and the U.S. public viewed Latin America. She credits improved relations in the hemisphere to the investment of the agency in culture, and she refers to...

Exhibiting Identity: Latin America between the Imaginary and the Real

The place where art is exhibited affects the perception of an artwork as it implicitly speaks about who selects and supports the display. The introduction of Latin American art in the United States is bound to the political aims pursued by the organizations that carried on this project: the Office of the Coordinator of Inter American Affairs (OCIAA), in the 1940s; the Organization of American States (OAS), during the Cold War; and, especially, the Center for Inter-American Relations (CIAR), in the 1970s. Because art was being used as a political vehicle to improve relations between culturally detached regions, these initiatives favored artworks that more easily entered into an already fixed and pre-established identity pattern. The selected artworks promoted a stereotyped image of Latin America as a place untouched by modernity, or a magical site linked to the pre-Columbian past. By the 1970s, however, artworks exhibited the complexity and impossibility of identity fixations and definitions about what was Latin America. Interested in dealing with the convulsive reality of the region, artists made full use of international languages, and doing so they exposed all the institutional initiatives that had manipulated the place of art and its representations for political purposes.

Missionary Capitalist: Nelson Rockefeller in Venezuela

From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, Nelson Rockefeller represented several generations of Rockefeller family interest in Venezuela by forming and leading a family- financed development company, the International Basic Economy Corporation. Widely known widely throughout Latin America as IBEC, it brought a new dimension of American business to Latin America—espousing a self-consciously “socially responsible” private capitalism. This was to be a very different company from the Rockefellers’ earlier Venezuelan venture, Creole Petroleum Corporation, an off- shoot of Standard Oil. As a young man, Nelson’s father, John Jr., had been on the board of another subsidiary, the Colorado Iron and Fuel Company, when the disastrous labor troubles at Ludlow, Colorado, erupted. Now father John and son Nelson wanted to move the family away from the “octopus” reputation of Creole in Venezuela.Just before World War II, President Roosevelt—worried about hemispheric relations with Latin America and, especially, infiltration by the Nazis there—took a number of steps. One involved Nelson, who now began a public service career in the newly established post of Coordinator of Inter American Affairs, or CIAA. Under Rockfeller’s direction, the office instituted programs in public health, agricultural research, and economic development. Rockefeller served through the war with praise and in 1944 was appointed by Roosevelt as assistant secretary of state for Latin American Affairs, focusing on political issues. He carried this portfolio less successfully to the San Francisco Conference of the United Nations and was not reappointed by Harry Truman.He then turned back to private enterprise and philanthropy, and thus was born IBEC in 1947. A nonprofit philanthropic entity (American International Association) was also constituted at the same time. IBEC, in contrast, definitely was profit seeking, but with a Nelson Rockefeller twist: each foreign enterprise would seek a 50 percent level of ownership from local investors. Visible recognition of this principle would help establish American capitalism as dependable, responsible, and productive in the Third World. Self-interest and public interest could thereby interact as they had not before. Later, Rockefeller would take this same formula to Brazil, and in a lesser way to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Puerto Rico.“Basic economy” meant, in particular, food and shelter. In Venezuela, “VBEC” began efforts in modern dairy plants, a string of supermarkets (an innovative concept in Latin America), offshore fishing, and a physical land enhancement company (plowing services, etc.). The dairy and supermarket efforts, which were quite successful, lasted into the recent period. Venezuela provided a test case for many ideas, and Brazil even more so. It was all, indeed, “missionary capitalism,” with some successes but many shortfalls.Abiding passion for politics began to dominate Nelson’s life, first with the presidential chases in the 1960s, then his 1966–73 governorship of New York, and finally, the vice presidency under Gerald Ford. This post was marked, incidentally, by bitter confirmation hearings, where his role in Latin America, and especially in Venezuela, underwent microscopic analysis.Darlene Rivas’s book is a meticulous and refreshing addition to the literature on Nelson Rockefeller’s interest in Latin America, comparable to Elizabeth Cobbs’s fine book on Rockefeller’s Brazilian IBEC companies, The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil (Yale University Press, 1992). Rivas points to his “great faith in the vitality of individual action, of entrepreneurship” (p. 209) but calls IBEC his “quixotic adventure.” Nationalist resentment, she avers, was at the heart of this; indeed, on a visit as governor to Argentina in 1969, mobs burned 14 of IBEC’s 17 supermarkets in Buenos Aires. “Limited by his optimism, he failed to notice the contradictions within his own belief system. He overestimated the ability of individuals to transcend their circumstances to achieve the dream,” Rivas closes.

Nelson Rockefeller and British Security Coordination

On 16 August 1940 (well over a year before Pearl Harbour) President Roosevelt, by Executive Order, created the Office of the Coordinator of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics (later changed to Coordinator of InterAmerican Affairs),' and appointed young Nelson A. Rockefeller who was then thirty-two years old, Coordinator. The 'Rockefeller office', as it came to be known, immediately became a focal point of the first peacetime effort by a US government in what has since been termed operational intelligence. The work involved in the creation of this office was conducted by James Forrestal, then serving as one of six Special Assistants to the President, and later to become Secretary of the Navy and, subsequently, America's first Secretary of Defense. Experience gained in operational intelligence became a factor, through Forrestal, in the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency. American intelligence experts, as well as writers on the subject, have remained totally in the dark as to the work of the Rockefeller office in the intelligence field. Those who knew, for reasons we shall examine later, remained silent, and those who did not know, but who were experienced in other areas, preferred to describe themselves as the pioneers in the field. From the standpoint of intelligence history it has been as if Fremont, the 'Pathfinder', had never heard of Lewis and Clark, and they, in turn, either remained in ignorance of Daniel Boone, or preferred for reasons of vanity or pride, to ignore him.

The Present as Past: Assessing the Value of Julien Bryan's Films as Historical Evidence

With this ringing affirmation, Julien Bryan concluded Americans All, his first documentary about Latin America produced under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CI-AA) as part of the U.S. government's effort to foster hemispheric solidarity. By 1945 he had completed twenty-two more, including four on Latin America as a region; five on Chile; three each about Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay; and one each concerning Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Paraguay. The CI-AA distributed the films to thousands of U.S. schools, clubs, and organizations during the war. After the conflict was over, they continued to be the standard educational films about Latin America until, by the 1960s, damage or obsolescence forced most prints out of circulation. For the historian, however, “obsolescence” is not an undesirable quality, and a careful screening suggests that these thirty-year old documentaries contain an extraordinary visual record of Spanish South America and provide insight into inter-American relations. The purpose here is to assess the value of Bryan's twenty-three films as historical evidence, based on an analysis of the narration and photography and taking into account the special nature of film as a source material.

Charles Lyon Chandler: A Forgotten Man of Inter-American Cultural Relations

“The Time seems to be excellent for promoting close relations I with Latin America,” Franklin Roosevelt wrote Charles Lyon Chandler on February 15, 1936. For Chandler, the most simpático of all simpáticos, his entire active life was the time for the promotion of inter-American relations. As a consular official, author, agent of the Southern Railway, foreign trade manager of the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank of Philadelphia, agent for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and college professor, Chandler vehemently and persistently furthered the cause of inter-American understanding and cooperation. Hundreds of his speeches, articles, and his pioneer book also bear witness to his devotion to panamericanismo, as do the honors bestowed upon him by Brazil, Chile and Colombia. Though Chandler's many activities established his place as a precursor and chief prophet of modern inter-American cultural relations, pursued by private corporations, foundations and government agencies, he has not as yet received a just share of the credit accorded those who started the movement for increased cultural appreciation between North and South America. He remains today a splendid example of the forgotten man.

Facts, Figures, and Opinions on the Present Status of Portuguese

Many who attended the 1949 Modern Language Association meeting at Stanford University were impressed by the frequent expressions of skepticism regarding the present and future of Portuguese studies in the United States. It is therefore hoped that some of the findings in the present study will be of interest and value. Portuguese, like Russian, is one of the newest comers to the field of foreign-language teaching. The first known college instructor in this tongue in the United States was Pietro Bachi, who taught at Harvard from 1826 to 1846 (1). Over a hundred years have passed since that pioneer introduced Portuguese. During this time, however, it can scarcely be said that the teaching of the language has flourished. Indeed, until very recently Portuguese was studied almost exclusively by graduate students of Romance philology. The new Good Neighbor policy of the 30's and the exigencies of World War II gave Portuguese a new lease on life. The language was discovered and almost overnight courses in it appeared in the curricula of our colleges, while articles in numerous journals proclaimed the importance of Portuguese. The growth of Portuguese instruction was phenomenal. According to the Office of the Coordinator of Inter American Affairs, in the December, 1942, issue of Among US, there were in 1942 fifty-one courses in Portuguese, with a total of 558 students. This was in decided contrast with the enrollment for the previous year, which was only 205. By 1943 at least seventy-five colleges and universities were offering courses in Portuguese, although few schools gave more than an elementary course. In a survey for the year 1943-1944, the Office of Education learned that ninety-two colleges and universities were then offering Portuguese (2). Enrollment figures for recent years have been supplied through the courtesy of Mr. Allen Wilber, Vice-President of Appleton-Century-Crofts. For the fall of 1946, ninety-four colleges, universities, and teachers' colleges reported a total of 1868 students. For the autumn of 1947 the same institutions reported a total of 1739 students. However, another report in the fall of 1947, covering 102 institutions, indicated a total of 1848 students, while the same institutions in the autumn of 1948 had 1630 students. These figures indicate only a slight dropping off in Portuguese enrollments, not out of proportion with a moderate downward trend of 8.3 percent in all modern language enrollments reported in Appleton-Century-Crofts' Modern Language News for the fall of 1948. Unfortunately, comprehensive figures for 1949 are not yet available, but according to Mr. Wilber, the downward trend has continued. For example, thirty-seven colleges and universities reported a total of 629 Portuguese students in the fall of 1949, as compared with 690 the previous year. The fact emerges from all these figures that in less than a decade the Portuguese enrollment has climbed from about 200 to somewhat over 1700. The statistics themselves appear not at all discouraging; nevertheless they do not tell the whole story. It is a factwhich can be confirmed by talking to department heads and publishers' representativesthat Portuguese is being dropped from the curricula of a considerable number of schools, while other institutions will offer it only in alternate years. Desirous of knowing how colleagues in various parts of the country regarded the situation, I sent out a letter-questionnaire to some thirty institutions. The questions asked were: 1. Has the Portuguese enrollment d clined at your institution? 2. What, in your opinion, are the causes for such a decline, both at your school and throughout the country? 3. What reasonable and legitimate meas-

Our American Neighbours

Journal Article Our American Neighbours Get access Our American Neighbours. Prepared by the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs. Editor, M. B. Schnapper. 1945. 914′​′×6′​′⁠. 280 pp. Diagrams. Illus. Maps. Washington, Public Affairs Press. $3. William C. Atkinson William C. Atkinson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 25, Issue 1, January 1949, Page 120, https://doi.org/10.2307/3019159 Published: 01 January 1949

Proposed Solutions of Some Difficulties in the Teaching of Portuguese

A CONSENSUS would seem to point to the choice of the language of Brazil as being the most suitable linguistic norm to be employed in the teaching of Portuguese to North American students. However, the language of Brazil does not present a homogeneous linguistic front. To speak of a Brazilian pronunciation is to speak of something which does not exist. The problem that confronts the American teacher, therefore, is to determine which one of the many pronunciations is to be adopted. A decision based on the works of Brazilian grammarians and phoneticians cannot be arrived at because of the lack of unanimity among them. Differences of opinion are to be noted in texts published in this country and written by Brazilians. Recent grammars written by North Americans purporting to give an expose of Brazilian pronunciation also differ in the treatment of this all-important phase of the language. In order to arrive at some satisfactory solution of the problem, the writer decided to study the speech employed by professional Brazilian radio-broadcasters. The Brazilian section of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was most helpful in putting at his disposal transcriptions of recent broadcasts to Brazil. The writer concentrated on the speech of the individual who was generally conceded to be an outstanding Brazilian broadcaster. The reasoning behind the choice was that if the speech of this broadcaster was sufficiently good for the radio-listening public of Brazil, it should, in consequence, serve as a satisfactory model for instruction in the classes of the writer.

Proceedings of the Conference on Latin America in Social and Economic Transition Sponsored by the University of New Mexico in Cooperation with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs

Proceedings of the Conference on Latin America in Social and Economic Transition Sponsored by the University of New Mexico in Cooperation with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs

Nutrition in Brazil

Dr. Mascarenhas is Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Gastro-Enterology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Brazil Medical School, Rio de Janeiro, and Nutritionist, Brazilian Ministry of Education and Health. He is now studying in this country on a fellowship granted by the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. The paper which follows was presented before the Harvard School of Public Health (Dr. Fredrick J. Stare’s Nutrition Course), Boston, January 19, 1944, and supplements information concerned with food and nutrition in Pan-American countries which has appeared recently in this Journal.

Latin-American Content in Some Basic Tests in use in the United States

The years 1943-44 witnessed the launching and completion of what may very well prove to be the most significant survey of basic teaching ma terials that has ever been attempted in the United States. The American Council on Education, with financial backing and encouragement from the Office of The Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, carried to completion a study of the treatment of Latin American content in the teaching materials in all the basic subject matter fields on the elementary, secondary and college levels in the schools of this nation. It is too early to predict the far-reaching effects upon possible textbook revision and ultimate betterment of inter national relations?which may eventually be traced to this project.

Walt Disney Studio—A War Plant<!--<xref ref-type="other" rid="fn1-10.5594_J08453">*</xref>-->

The fact that many peace-time industries and manufacturing plants have been converted practically 100 per cent into war plants manufacturing implements for war, is a well-known, not unusual fact. However, when a cartoon studio, which for many years has been engaged in creating whimsical entertainment for the screen, suddenly becomes a war plant, it is a somewhat more unusual fact. — From a studio whose yearly production program included 2 or 3 features, plus 24 short subjects, Walt Disney Productions has at this time no feature in work, and is having difficulty producing a minimum number of short subjects. All of this, of course, is caused by the fact that between 90 and 95 per cent of the facilities of the organization are today devoted to producing training films for the Navy, the Army Signal Corps, the Army Air Forces, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, the Treasury Department, and other governmental agencies. — This “change-over” in product at the Walt Disney Studio has brought a set of problems that is not frequently encountered in the average war plant. There was no radical “change-over” of heavy machinery, or the installation of new dies and presses. It was mental rather than physical adjustment. — A studio and its personnel accustomed to working for 2 or 3 years on one picture were suddenly requisitioned to produce a film, twice feature length, in 4 to 6 months. The financial departments accustomed to budgeting pictures for ½ of a million to 1½ million dollars found themselves piecing out $12,000 and $15,000, and less, for production budgets. Creative personnel accustomed to racking their brains for a new switch on some problem near and dear to Donald Duck's personality found themselves commissioned to explain to men at Navy training bases all aspects of the functioning and maintenance of a gyroscope, and its relation to the over-all functioning of an aerial torpedo. — To accomplish all of these ends, then, has been the task. That it has been accomplished is evidenced by the films now in use in all branches of the service. That the results have been worth while is indicated in several ways, but in no way more satisfying than when a man in uniform stops at the studio and states that he viewed such-and-such a picture in a combat zone and adds, “.…it sure helped.”

The New World Guides to the Latin American Republics. Sponsored by the Office of the U. S. Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs

The New World Guides to the Latin American Republics. Sponsored by the Office of the U. S. Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs