Havana — Never had a country appeared as old as Cuba did when it started to upgrade itself. The mad rush to develop serves only to confirm our comical, almost antediluvian backwardness. The New7Wonders Foundation, an organization that aims to preserve monuments worldwide, has just chosen Havana as a “wonder city.” In a strict sense it is, although the local residents struggle to believe it.

Hordes of inquisitive foreigners are eager to step back into historical eras that are mostly extinct in other parts of the world. There are now nonstop flights by six airlines based in the United States, and the number will only grow.

The theme park that is Cuba is an insular museum, stuck between the Iron Curtain and the industrial capitalism of the 1950s. The symbols include the already insufferable classic Chevrolets, the Singer sewing machines, the General Motors refrigerators, the Lada and Moskvitch cars, the Aurika washing machines, the matryoshka dolls, the military and party propaganda. It’s likely that not many Cubans, promised a chance to move somewhere better off, would pass up a chance to leave Cuba as it is, untouched, frozen in time, covered in soot and light, varnished with that curious and appealing patina of an era in which surviving, however, is so terribly difficult.

Those travelers who are booking tickets on state-approved nonstop flights to Cuba should be advised: “Fear not. Buy your tickets with all the calm and confidence in the world that nothing has changed.” The resources we Cubans have drawn upon to modernize ourselves, and all the good news that has transpired in the last few months since relations with the United States were renewed, have failed to alter the status quo. So there’s nothing to fear. Havana is not quite yet turning into Dubai.