HAVANA — Secret Service agents were surprised on Tuesday to find former Cuban president Fidel Castro hiding in a suitcase belonging to first lady Michelle Obama, who was due to leave Cuba with her husband after a three-day visit to the island nation.
The ailing 89-year-old was said to appear cognizant as agents unzipped the suitcase and gently lifted him out, and at least one source says that he was dressed in a neatly pressed shirt and was carrying a small travel case of his own.
“Are we there yet?” Castro said when escorted away by Cuban agents, adding later, “Your Spanish is very good for a yanqui.”
After President Obama and his wife departed Havana’s airport, Fidel’s brother Raul, who has been in power since 2006, quickly downplayed the incident and denied that it was an attempt to defect to the U.S.
Instead, Raul insisted that his brother was looking for a lost baseball and slipped and fell into the suitcase, then decided it would be funny to play a joke on the visiting capitalists who think that they can just “go around collecting world leaders like souvenirs just for some legacy-building bullshit.”