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Thirty four members of the Organization of American States met in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago over the weekend for the fifth Summit of the Americas. President Obama’s first meeting with many of Latin American heads of state, followed a widely-published op-ed prior to the summit that emphasized putting aside past differences and moving on issues of the economy and security. Cuba, which has been expelled from the OAS since 1962, was not invited to the meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, but nevertheless dominated discussions in the wake of ground-breaking overtures from both the US and Cuban leadership. Obama also had a couple of encounters with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who gave him a signed copy of Eduardo Galeano’s radical history book, “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.” The meeting signaled a thawing of relations between the two countries. After the summit, President Obama reflected, “It’s a reminder … that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction — if our only interaction is military — then we may not be developing the connections that can over time increase our influence and have a beneficial effect.”

GUEST: Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C..