President Obama has returned to Washington after attending the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, where he vowed to repair relations with Latin America. At the summit, Obama briefly met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who gave Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s book The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. At a news conference on Sunday, Obama responded to criticism of him for shaking Chavez’s hand.

President Obama: “It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States. I don’t think anybody can find any evidence that that would do so. Even within this imaginative crowd, I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which US interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela.”