A veil of silence surrounded the movements of Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old shipwreck survivor who spent his first day in Havana yesterday, after a seven-month battle between his father and US relatives.
The boy spent the day in a specially prepared "half home, half school" according to one insider, in Havana's fashionable Miramar district, home to diplomats and foreign business executives. The building was set aside by Cuba's Union of Communist Youth (UJC), who enjoy the use of it for protocol meetings.
The residence is occupied by Elian's family, his school friends and a team of psychologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, teachers and doctors, who will help Cuba's most famous child reintegrate into daily life. His immediate task was to recover months of missing classes, which will allow him to return to his own school in September, when a new academic year begins.
However, the overriding emotional task is to help the boy come to terms with the loss of his mother, Elizabeth Broton, who died alongside him as she tried to reach US shores last December.
"He has not yet had a chance to mourn the loss of his mother," said Ms Aurora Garcia, a professor of psychology at the University of Havana, who has been seconded to his an support team.
"This is a transition phase," explained Ms Garcia. "He needs to be in a peaceful place, without any media assault or the attentions of his neighbours in Cardenas" a reference to his home town, situated 140 kms outside Havana. Residents of Cardenas have expressed their desire to celebrate their annual carnival from July 6th to 9th in his honour, a proposal which was quickly ruled out by the Cuban government.
"Our people and our revolution act always in an ethical way, unlike the mafia and opportunistic politicians," read one of the six official communiques issued by the government, followed by a letter to the Cuban people.
The atmosphere of normality in the streets around Elian's new home contrasted sharply with the media circus which quickly grew up around his an's stay in Miami.
However Cubans also appeared to savour a rare triumph over the anti-Castro lobby group based in Miami, one which goes beyond the immediate return of Elian and may signal the weakening of emigre-Cuban hegemony over US foreign policy towards the island.
"This case can only improve our relations with the US," said Mr Gerardo Lopez, a worker in the Cuban tourist industry, pointing to the imminent relaxation of the trade embargo on the sale of food and medicine supplies from the US to the island.
While the Cuban government has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect Elian from prying eyes and achieve its goal of making him "an ordinary citizen once more", the boy's life has been irrevocably altered by the drama of the past seven months.
Elian's current Havana "halfway house" has a swimming pool and round-the-clock professional attention, a far cry from his humble home in Cardenas, where he shares a bedroom with his parents and infant sibling.