With its distinctive blend of color, light and antiquity, Cuba is an alchemist’s ideal melting pot. Havana is renowned for its collection of architecturally unique colonial buildings mixed in with a dash of drab, Soviet-era high rises spruced up in blinding shades of canary yellow, key lime green and pomegranate red. Streets are lit up by bold hues of bright colors found on freshly restored buildings, flourishing street art and a fleet of DeSotos, Studebakers and hybrid 1950s cars jerry-rigged by home-brewed Cubans’ ingenuity.

So manifest is Cuba’s image as a colorful tropical paradise that few people notice its similarities with Martha’s Vineyard. Its differences are readily apparent. The Vineyard has four seasons and a gentle summer and was settled by the English. Most Islanders are of Northern European heritage and Christian faith while the landscape features a muted palate of whites, historic colonial hues, and the grays and browns of aged shingles and weather-whipped wood.

In contrast, Cuba has three seasons of gentle summer weather with an agonizing summer and was colonized by Spain. Cubans are generally of Spanish and African descent. Some are Catholic but more follow the Afro-Caribbean religion of Santeria. The island’s landscape is a mesh of perpetually lush tropical greens and vibrant primary colors.

Both are indeed beautiful islands. Bartholomew Gosnold named the Vineyard for its vineyard-like beauty. On first seeing Cuba in 1492, Christopher Columbus pronounced, “This is the most beautiful land that human eyes have ever seen.”

After spending time in Havana and other parts of the country, however, it becomes evident that Cuba is more similar to the Vineyard than is initially apparent. One common link, of course, is the powerful impact of each island’s proximity to the ocean. Intense sunset colors ranging from fiery yellow-oranges to slate gray-blues rain down on the Malecon in Havana as they do on Dutcher’s Dock in Menemsha. Constant contact with sun, salt and storms alter natural landscapes and wash out the intensity of colors and the integrity of materials to create a certain decay aesthetic derived from exposure and neglect. Cuba and the Vineyard battle the impact of an ongoing deterioration that is revealed gently and gradually. Building facades demand constant attention, and the result is often a combination of inattention and the passage of time. Shorelines recede. Salt air accelerates rust and rot.

The peeling paint and weathering wood of Vineyard shacks, saltboxes and barns expose an interplay between time and nature that is also evident in the way Cuba’s crumbling stone facades are revealed layer by layer. However, while the effect may be similar, the cause is not.

The Vineyard’s physical separation from the mainland, along with its New England personality of outward frugality and independence (for the most part) has often acted as a barrier against rapid growth and change. For Cuba, the impact of the U.S. embargo and government policies further isolated a country where the connection of family and community, personal contact and old school values from a bygone era have retained importance.

The Vineyard chose its path, mainly through environmental policies put into effect in the 1970s and the will of the people, in order to remain distinct from the rampant development, chain stores and billboards of the mainland. The easing of U.S. restrictions and rapid increase in tourism and money now pouring into Cuba are clear examples of a “new Cuba” that promises to reshape the island as an agrarian culture merges with the digital era.

As with the Vineyard, Cuba contains a mixture of people from many different backgrounds. This balance of diversity is essential to managing growth while still maintaining traditional characteristics. Vineyarders know all too well the negative impact when off-Island wealth acquires significant tracts of land and builds massive McCottages out of scale and style with the Island’s tradition.

Cuba has just begun to experience similar problems as the increasing influx of wealth promotes gentrification and a movement toward luxury and a consumer ethos. This will only increase as America, perhaps most problematic, turns its covetous and consumerist eye to the potential gold rush that is the Cuban tourism industry. The island’s future will be greatly determined by the degree to which its need for foreign capital and a growing private sector results in the government’s ability to maintain central control and guide the use of natural resources and economic opportunities.

Since Castro took power in 1959, Cuba has displayed a propensity to move slowly and expect the worst. Nevertheless, the belief that a New Cuba is on the horizon is clearly on the minds and expectations of many Cubans. For decades, the focus of the government has been on delivering freedom from many conditions of human misery and suffering such as poverty, starvation, illness, illiteracy, violence, crime and foreign domination. But it is also clear that Cuban socialism discounted the importance of individual freedoms such as the freedom of speech, movement, choice, ownership and the freedom for people to make decisions about their lives, careers and, perhaps most important, the freedom to pursue individual dreams.

Weary of governmental and geographical restraints, and frustrated by widespread inefficiency and economic paralysis, Cubans want to open up new prospects, adopt a more market-based economy, experience what is out there and have more of a say in determining their own future. Once a nation at the forefront of the industrial revolution, Cuba drifted over time to become a backwater of modernity.

In this respect, Cuba is the rare country that simultaneously combines elements of the first world and the third world. Old cars and once-majestic colonial buildings are quaint. But Cubans are no longer content with being just a tropical paradise tourist destination stuck in a 1950s time warp.

In the end, integrating a market-based economy with social values that unleash Cuban potential and an individual need for self-expression and self-determination may provide a way to move beyond failed economic plans and state centralized policies. But as many Vineyarders know, especially families who have lived here for centuries but who can no longer afford to, there is also great risk tied to great reward.

John Rosenmiller lives in New York city and West Tisbury and travels frequently to Cuba.