During World War II Arizona's Mexican-American communities organized their own patriotic activities and worked, in spite of racism, to support the war effort. In Phoenix the Lenadores del Mundo, an active fraternal society, began this effort by sponsoring a festival in January 1942. Such "mutualistas" provided an essential support system in the face of racism and discrimination, and were sources of cultural, social, and religious cohesion in Mexican-American communities. These societies spoke out after several blatant incidents of discrimination against Mexican-American teenagers, and later organized a Phoenix youth group that collected 2,200 pounds of old rubber for the war effort. Community organizations in Phoenix and Tucson also: (1) organized volunteer cotton pickers when a labor shortage threatened the crop, badly needed for parachute and blimp manufacture; (2) sponsored social gatherings in honor of Chicano military cadets; (3) arranged bilingual community education classes in American citizenship; (4) collected donations to provide cigarettes to soldiers overseas; (5) sold war bonds and war stamps; (6) collected clothing for the Red Cross; (7) planted victory gardens; (8) collected scrap metal and foil for recycling; and (9) provided child care services for mothers performing war-related activities. After the war most organizations disbanded, but one Tucson women's group continued to perform community service until 1976. This paper contains 30 endnotes. (SV)