Raúl Castro has said that change will be slow.

time since the embassy was closed, they will be allowed to travel freely in Cuba. They will be invited to state functions, too, like members of other diplomatic corps.

The U.S. government is supposed to ease access for Cubans entering the embassy and for the American Foreign Service offifficers inside, a State Department offifficial said.

Obama, when announcing an end to the diplomatic freeze, eased travel restrictions, opened the door for more remittances to Cuba, and expanded the amount of goods that visiting Americans could bring home, like Cuban cigars and rum. In May, he removed the country from the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

President Raúl Castro has spent the past fifive years, before the thaw began with the Obama administration, trying to jump-start the nation’s economy, ordering that hundreds of thousands of government employ- ees be laid offffffffffff, encouraging Cubans into self-employment and entrepreneurship, and creating a special economic zone in the coastal city of Mariel to attract foreign investment.

But many of these changes have been confronted with bracing realities. A farm program to encourage crop cultivation struggled because of regulations and a lack of reliable transportation, and the mass public-sector layoffffs Castro promised never really materialized. Real estate overhauls that now allow Cubans to sell their homes have run into a problem that vexes just about every segment of Cuban life: a lack of supplies.

Often, these initiatives have been ensnared by the mentality that has both preserved and ossifified Cuban life, one forged through years of anti-American sentiment that has defifined the social, political and economic lives of Cubans. Letting go of that is not easy.

Castro has said that change will be slow, and that it will not come at the cost of stability or values. Again and again, what emerges is this: Cuba will change, yes, but at its own pace and with no apologies.

For many Cubans, that is reason enough for hope.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” said Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a former Cuban diplomat who is close to Castro and his brother Fidel, the country’s longtime president. “And once it’s out, you’re not going to be able to put it back in.”

Out of the bottle or not, life continues as usual in Havana. A number of Cubans know about the opening of the U.S. Embassy and have formulated opinions about what it will mean for them.

Some fear that Cuban culture could be lost, devoured by U.S. consumerism. But just as many, if not more, are fifine with change if it means that they can earn enough to live on.