KINGSTON, Jamaica — Former Prime Minister P J Patterson has urged the nations of the Global South to abandon “national separatism and division” and unite in defence of a fairer global order, in a message submitted to the First International Colloquium “Fidel: Legacy and Future”, convened in Havana to mark the centenary of the birth of Fidel Castro Ruz.

The Colloquium, organised by the Fidel Castro Ruz Centre together with Cuban academic and cultural institutions, opened at the Havana Convention Centre on Monday and concludes on Thursday, 13 August 2026 — one hundred years to the day since Castro’s birth. It has drawn more than 1,500 delegates from some 60 countries.

Patterson advised organisers that a convergence of circumstances had made it impossible for him to attend in person, expressing “considerable regret” at his absence. His disappointment, he noted, was the greater for his standing as “the sole surviving participant” in the historic summit held in Port of Spain in December 1972, at which the leaders of the four then-independent Caribbean states resolved to establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba and so end its isolation in this 80s hemisphere.

That decision, he emphasised, was an exercise of sovereign right taken in pursuit of “a zone of peace in our single space”, undertaken without any calculation of the benefits that would follow. The programmes spawned in the decades since — medical brigades, educational scholarships, disaster relief and technical expertise — had, he said, been provided by Cuba without “a single conditionality” and without any request for reciprocity of any kind.

Speaking of the man he was privileged to know, Patterson described Fidel Castro Ruz as “a warrior for human dignity everywhere and a champion who was an invincible foe to injustice anywhere”, a leader who believed in the sovereign equality of nations “regardless of size, military might or economic power”. He recalled Cuba’s sacrifice in Angola, which he credited with hastening the end of apartheid and advancing political liberation across the African continent, and characterised Castro as “a quintessential strategist and simultaneously the supreme tactician” who invested in human resources what Cuba lacked in natural ones.

Turning to the present, Patterson pointed to what he termed “the reincarnation of the Munroe doctrine in an even more repulsive edict”, the dismantling of the multilateral system and “the emergence of a new imperium with its flagrant disregard of international law”.

His prescription was unambiguous. “South—South solidarity is pivotal to our survival and future well-being,” he stated, calling on the Global South to honour the memory and precepts of Fidel and “forge instead a single phalanx to fashion that new global architecture which is inclusive, fair and sustainable for every man, woman and child on planet Earth”.

He further called upon every participant in the Colloquium, and every nation that holds sacred the essence of the human condition, to “condemn, deplore, resist and render adequate relief” in response to what he described as the “cruel, repugnant and unlawful fuel tourniquet” and the punitive embargo imposed upon Cuba.

Patterson closed his message by invoking Castro’s own words from the dock in 1953, proclaiming “the clear, incontrovertible verdict” that history had already absolved him in full.