Sell, buy, travel. And a pending digital world

Among the new measures some have had a direct social impact. The ability to freely buy and sell homes and cars has turned many people in unexpected "owners", or aspiring ones. To the traditional renting to tourists now sold houses or rented spaces to set up businesses are a common feature.

House prices of course depend on the area, the construction status and access to basic services. "For sale" ads have gradually replaced the old "permuting" ones both on the facades and digital spaces where they are advertised. No one is very clear about taxes and at the moment randomness and above the economic expectations of sellers seem to prevail. Prices can range from a low 10,000 cuc (some 7000 euro) for a humble social housing flat to swelling numbers of more than 150,000 cud. In any case it is a lot of money if you compare it with the everyday economy. In a country where the housing stock is quite poor to own a house is certainly a shared aspiration, but prices go far beyond the means of most people, so the new market looks set for very specific sectors.

More difficult to understand are the exorbitant prices of second hand cars, which can range from 10,000 to over 20,000 cuc , depending on brand and condition. But having a vehicle can be a clear sign of status and source of income.

Many Cubans have become, overnight, something like "new"owners, and make plans for what to do with their money.

Moreover the recent and highly anticipated changes in immigration policy allow a fairly broad freedom to Cubans to leave and enter the country. The elimination of exit permits, letters of invitation and extending the stay abroad up to two years, involve changes of great social impact and greatly help regularize the always sensitive and very human migration issue.

Now one can go out, but now the problem is to decide "where to go", in other words: who will give visas to Cubans ? In this dilemma, the candidates to travel or live abroad are "inventing" possible solutions: dual nationality, marriage, family reunification, employment contracts ... Anything will do!

It need to be mentioned as well the field of new media, something the younger Cubans commonly use, and ranging from USB memories through MP3 and MP4, or the widespread use of mobile phones, up to Internet which is restricted but not inaccessible, which for many is the true psychological and actual boundary between the last two centuries. This is a theme, like many others, still pending.

A process of metamorphosis, although without a conclusion

Starting with multiple and strategic state investments (nickel, petroleum, ports, tourism ... ) it is assumed that the socio-economic future should be promising, but between the macro-future and the micro-everyday life, for the moment, there is a space filled with contradictions and differences for surely no one was prepared beforehand.

With the economic changes and openings also ways of thinking and societal values have evolved, assuming some contrasts as "normal", however the space of change of the mentalities is more difficult to measure, and probably depend on the age, social sector or even geographic location. However it is clear that the "heroic" and "epic" society which was presented during the 60s to the 80s of the last century has given way, today, to a very practical and pragmatic society, which employs terms, and even vocabulary, quite different from before.

Of the 313 guidelines approved at the last Congress of the PCC (Communist Party of Cuba), dozens have already come true, while the rest many of them of great social significanc , are being studied or implemented experimentally. The official slogan is "without haste but without pause" and perhaps it is this very same slogan that will be the basic determinant of the process of metamorphosis, which is nothing more than a slow but essential transformation, whose results, applying to a whole nation, are still to be seen.

As the refrain of the popular duo Buena Fe reminds us "here everybody counts."