1958 Andrew McLeod is a child living in Cuba in the early days of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro�s Revolución

2008 He returns to the haunts of his childhood ... but with the island on the cusp of another transformation, how do ordinary Cubans feel about the future?

THE Tarará I knew at the dawn of Cuba's Revolución was a place of quiet palm-lined streets, and bungalows with gardens bursting with tropical colour and humming birds flitting among the flowers. The glare of white sands and turquoise waters was within easy reach of our home by bicycle, and there was a marina and a clubhouse with a bowling alley, a gathering place for kids. Locals claimed, wrongly as it happens, that the vultures often seen circling overhead were introduced from the United States in the 19th century - for some they may have symbolised the US's long fixation with its island neighbour 90 miles off the tip of Florida.

Tarará was a private estate in those days and entry was restricted to residents and friends. After the fall of the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Eve in 1958, the asthmatic revolutionary Che Guevara temporarily took up residence there on doctor's orders and Fidel Castro, his brother Raúl and Camilo Cienfuegos would sometimes gather at Che's house to map out the next steps in their revolution. My younger sister Shirley would always wave and cry "Adios, Fidel" whenever she saw a helicopter fly over Tarará, for like most people we knew, our family were sympathisers of the Revolución. Though we knew our dog as Rex, his secret name was Rebel; a neighbour's dog's name, Hi-Fi, may well have carried a secret code: hi-FIDEL-ity. We would chant anti-Batista slogans on the school bus; we tried and failed to get Che's autograph, being turned away by a house servant after ringing the comandante's doorbell; we threw stones at street lamps with Fidel's son, Fidelito, who lived nearby with his divorcee mother; and in our role-playing games, my older brother Malcolm was Fidel and I was Che - although we had Superman, Batman, and the Lone Ranger, these bearded warriors were our real heroes.

Our family had sailed into Havana on the ferry from Key West in early 1957, having driven down from Toronto after my father, who worked for agricultural equipment manufacturer Massey Harris Ferguson, was transferred to Cuba. We lived for a year under the Revolución and moved to Brazil just before Christmas in 1959. Even at the age of eight I was interested in Che, for like the revolutionary, I was Argentine-born, as were all my family despite their Scottish ancestry. Because of my confusing background and because I spoke English, I once took my Argentine passport to school to prove I wasn't a yanqui. Then all the kids thought I was like Che.

These memories come flooding back on my return to Havana, as I find myself again outside the place I so dearly loved as a child. In 1958 a security guard was shot dead at the gated entrance by revolutionaries who had come in search of officials linked to the Batista regime. There is a new barrier now, and two security guards approach my taxi and order the driver to open the boot for inspection. Satisfied we are not carrying drugs or arms, the guards show me into a small air-conditioned room where a group of people are watching TV. A scowling, officious woman at a desk snaps: "What's your name? Have you got an appointment?"

"No," I say, "but I have this journalist's card issued by the foreign ministry."

"That won't do why are you here?" she asks.

I tell her I lived here many years ago and just want to walk along the beach. She makes a quick phone call, turns to me and says: "You can't come in."

As we return to Havana I feel angry, stung by the woman's brusque manner - this is "my" Tarará, after all. But this is a communist country and upon closer inspection of the small print on my press card it becomes clear that I, the carrier, am "not authorised to carry out journalistic work in areas requiring special permission". Why is Tarará closed to outsiders? Later I will hear many explanations, including that Tarará is reserved for patients of Operación Milagro (Operation Miracle), under which thousands of Venezuelans and other Latin Americans have had their eyesight restored by Cuban doctors; that oil has been discovered off Tarará's shores; that the children of Chernobyl are still being treated here; that it has been closed because buildings are collapsing; that only foreigners can live there; and that it is reserved for "the Chinese", who are there to learn Spanish. Most of these explanations carry some degree of accuracy. But what has become of Fidel's revolutionary pledge that in the new Cuba there would be no private beaches?

Tarará is only part of the picture I am hoping to put together of a society that has been transformed so drastically in some ways, yet so little in others. I have come to talk to Cubans about the Revolución's cautious steps towards a more open economy under Raúl Castro, who in February succeeded his ailing brother as president. After half a century of socialist austerity amid a bitter stand off with the US, Cuba appears poised to catch up with a world obsessed by technology. I wonder how the Revolución will deal with that.

HAVANA must be one of the few capital cities where, in a room on the 13th floor of a 25-storey hotel, you can be awakened by the crow of a rooster. Although the streets are busier than they were a few years ago, there is still little traffic outside the Habana Libre hotel, a towering icon built by the Hilton chain in 1958 that straddles the pre and post-revolutionary periods of Cuba's turbulent 20th century history. This is underlined in the atrium and mezzanine by a gallery of photographs of 1950's celebrity guests - some linked to the US mafia - juxtaposed with other shots of scruffy rebels lounging around with their boots up on the hotel furniture. In one, Che Guevara is seen playing chess in the lobby.

Fidel marched into Havana in early January 1959 and commandeered the hotel, setting up his HQ in the plush La Castellana suite on the 22nd floor. The suite has been preserved as a kind of museum, and with the exception of the bathroom fittings, all the furniture is much as it was when Fidel occupied it. There is a grand piano, and in the dining room a large table around which Fidel, Raúl, Che and Camilo would hold their "cabinet" meetings. The balcony holds spectacular views of the city and its harbour. There are plans to painstakingly restore the entire hotel to its original 1958 condition, with replica furniture in all 574 rooms.

The hotel's plan to turn the clock back would have seemed less surprising 10 years ago, but today it seems almost anachronistic. Old Soviet Lada taxis are being replaced by Peugeots and Toyotas imported from Argentina and Brazil, and under Raúl, the government has lifted restrictions on the use of mobile phones and personal computers to assuage Cubans' hunger for the kind of technology the rest of the world takes for granted.

Even more surprising has been the government's decision to scrap the communist egalitarian wage structure under which a taxi driver or farmhand might earn as much as a surgeon or university professor. One problem is Cuba's confusing dual economy, which pays employees in worthless moneda nacional (national currency) while most goods are in the convertible pesos used in the tourism industry. This means those connected with tourism tend to be better off, as are the mainly white Cubans who receive dollar remittances from their relatives in Miami.

So when asked "how's life?", Cubans tend to shrug and say "things are improving", without much conviction. Things have definitely been worse: years of severe rationing during the long período especial (special period - the war economy imposed after the collapse of the Soviet Union) saw Cuban ingenuity taxed to its limits, with ground grapefruit rind "steaks" used as a substitute for beef, and breakfast often just a glass of sugared water because milk was scarce. Today, with the economy slowly recovering, paladars, or privately owned restaurants, have blossomed - although bizarrely, the law forbids them to serve more than 12 people at a time. Quality can vary: in one paladar I sample an excellent traditional chicken dish, which is exactly as I remember it as a child. Another serves a tough piece of pork with some barely reheated beans and rice. Since much of Cuba's food is imported, the country is vulnerable to the volatility of international food prices, and one paladar owner complains about the soaring price of cooking oil.

Fidel, who has accused paladar owners of using too much electricity, may abhor what he disparagingly calls "the consumer societies" of the US, Europe, and the Far East, but life on its fringes isn't easy. Complaints about surly attendants in state-run shops are rife in Havana. "We want private shops, as in the old days, where they would tell you, I think this would suit you better, madam'," says Ana, a taxi driver. "We would like the option to go somewhere else for the same product if we're treated with disrespect."

Cubans do not pass on the disrespect suffered at the hands of petty bureaucrats to each other, however, and politely ask who is last in a queue before joining it. There are exceptions, and fisticuffs have been known to break out at the sprawling Coppelia Park, a hugely popular ice cream parlour. At the Tiendas Panamericanas shopping complex, I ask a woman at the end of a queue what is on offer inside. "Soap and shampoo," she replies. Customers are being admitted in threes, rather like shoplifting Scottish schoolchildren. Curious about prices, I find a home appliances shop, almost devoid of customers, where a solitary Panasonic Viera flatscreen TV is priced at $3800 CUC (around £2000) - out of reach for most Cubans today, but so, I suppose, was our Zenith - a state of the art American TV set with the world's first cordless remote control - for all but the wealthiest Cubans back in 1958.

On an evening walk through Vedado, a residential district with crumbling masonry and tidy parks, I find myself drawn to one building, certain it is where we visited friends of my parents. Their flat had been typical of Vedado's modern American-style apartment buildings; today it looks derelict, although it is still lived in. "This is what happens when the state owns everything and there is no private sector," explains José, an Afro-Cuban mechanic. "There is not enough housing and it is very difficult for a young couple to have to live in the same house with their in-laws, or grandparents."

At least Havana does not have the sickening hovels of Brazil's favelas, Argentina's villas miseria, Peru's barriadas or Mexico's barrios. Cuba's children look well-dressed and healthy in comparison to many of their counterparts in other parts of Latin America.

Riding on the school bus as a child, I remember looking out of the windows and seeing a raggedly-dressed woman who lived alone under a cardboard shelter by the side of the highway. When I asked my father why she lived in such a place, he replied: "She probably doesn't have anyone to help her."

She would not have faced such a predicament today. Despite the habaneros' healthy propensity for dissent, every Cuban I meet points to free health care and education as the two great successes of the Revolución. At the Salvador Allende polyclinic, the shabby state of the building's exterior and some of its furnishings suggest a hospital in dire need of funding. But the polyclinic's head, Dr Maricela Ledesma, points out that "everything in every department is in working order", and the thing they most urgently require is "a new printer for the library". My "alter ego" Che, a doctor, would have been proud of the Revolución's successes in health care. Alberto Granado, the now 85-year-old Argentine biochemist who famously motorcycled with Guevara through South America and was a driving force in developing the country's health care system, these days flits between Havana and Buenos Aires, avoiding the stifling summers of each country.

I have heard the two adventurers' old Norton motorcycle is on display at a new Centro Che. When I try to visit it, a security guard confirms the motorcycle is inside, but adds that I can't see it because the centre is still under construction. We fall into conversation, and when the subject of my mixed national heritage comes up, the guard asks me if Scotland is a country made up of many races, because if so, it "must be like the United States, a big melting pot which they've been stirring, stirring, stirring for years - and look what came out of it there George Bush!"

Good-natured banter about the Americans, rather than animosity, is typical among the Cubans I meet. But as I leave the Centro Che, I find myself wondering how Guevara himself would have viewed the world today. His daughter, Aleida, recently expressed irritation over "the manipulation of Che's image by his enemies", citing an advertising campaign for a mobile phone service as an example. "It is disgraceful how they use this man, who lived so humbly and died the same way," she said.

I have seen Che figures and images on sale in Havanan flea markets and even the Museo de la Revolución, but I feel sure Aleida's criticism was not aimed at her father's former comrades-in-arms. The most common bust to be seen in Havana is that of José Martí, Cuba's independence hero, which is often mistaken by tourists for Stalin. But there are no busts of Fidel or any other living leader of the Revolución, let alone Stalin. Only Guevara's image is sacrosanct, especially in schools, where children are taught to "be like Che".

At the time I attended a private school here in Havana, around a third of Cubans were illiterate. Today, the country's literacy rate is the highest in Latin America after Argentina. The school day runs from 8am to 4.30pm, although truancy is said to be a problem. School buildings are run down but there are TV sets in classrooms and computers are being introduced into every school.

The Abel Santamaría special school, although in need of paint and maintenance, is renowned for its work with children with disabilities. When I visit, a group of Venezuelan delegates to an international literacy congress are being shown the handiwork of a group of pupils, including papier mache images of Che made with materials donated by Venezuela. On one wall hangs a photo of Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chávez, on another, one of Fidel.

Fidel , the Líder Máximo, has made four visits to the school - the most recent on his 80th birthday two years ago next month. "He arrived at two in the morning and stayed until four," the head teacher tells the Venezuelans, who seem incredulous.

"Were the children here at that time?" asks one. "Yes, we were all here," says the headmaster proudly, "and we had a wonderful time." That dead-of-night visit was typical of the tight security that surrounds Fidel, who has survived dozens of CIA assassination attempts.

FIDEL is aware of the growing clamour among the younger Cubans restless for some of the trappings of capitalism. The gradual introduction of modern technology has left the Revolución more vulnerable to its critics, and Fidel has hit out at Yoani Sánchez, a 33-year-old blogger who has gained notoriety abroad for her chronicles of the travails of day-to-day life in Havana. In May, Sánchez, a philologist, was denied an exit visa to travel to Madrid to receive the prestigious Ortega y Gasset award for her blog, Generación Y. Fidel says such awards are a tool of imperialist media and he regretted that there were "young Cuban people who think the way she Sánchez does". Whenever he reads foreign news reports about the award-winning blogger, Fidel says, he is made to think of Che's contribution to society.

Sánchez describes her blog as an "exercise in cowardice" because it enables her to say what she dare not say in public. In a recent entry she describes how in her neighbourhood cinema, "there are six beautiful glass doors, only one of which opens, and such is our conformity that at the end of the film all spectators try to squeeze through that one door. We have grown accustomed to being treated badly in shops, to receiving adulterated products and to having new services fall apart shortly after their inauguration. And we do all this with the same acceptance with which we stand by and watch the erosion of our civil rights."

Sánchez can at least express her views freely, but how many other Cubans are able to read her litany of complaints or write blogs of their own?

At the International Institute of Journalism at Havana University's School of Communications, I ask whether students have access to foreign newspapers or Google. "If we are restricted from reading foreign publications it is because we are technologically restricted - we are not restricted for political reasons," says Raul Garcés, head of the School of Journalism. "We can access the New York Times and other papers on the internet. The problem is, we have few computers and some are not in working order."

The students seem reticent to talk, although one expresses frustration that she cannot travel abroad to "experience other cultures". Cubans are very politicised and I find them closely watching the US presidential race in the hope that better ties, including a lifting of the trade embargo on Cuba, might emerge from a Barak Obama victory over John McCain. The Democrats' candidate has said that as president, he would be prepared to meet the Cuban leadership to "end 50 years of failed US policy".

"There is now a substantial group of people in the US who want to improve relations with Cuba," says Garcés. "This would inevitably lead to a normalisation of many things in Cuba itself. What you cannot do is separate Cuba's current circumstances from the break in relations with the United States nearly 50 years ago."

Cubans I talk to are adamant their country ought to never be dependent on a single country again. Today, Cuba has close ties with socialist Venezuela and it seems to have found a powerful new friend in China - although claims by US Vice President Dick Cheney that the Chinese are drilling for oil 30 miles off the Florida coast are scoffed at by international experts. It is also unclear how Fidel views the transformation of China into a capitalist superstate run by communists. In his autobiographical interview with Ignacio Ramonet, My Life, he describes China as a nation that has "held to certain fundamental principles, that sought unity, that didn't fragment its forces". His opinion differs on the Soviet Union, the collapse of which he admits he didn't see coming. At the same time, when asked what he would say to Cubans who yearn for the products of capitalist consumer societies, Fidel says he would like to tell them: "It is disastrous, just awful, because I try to imagine 1.3 billion Chinese with the per capita number of cars that the United States has "

It would also be hard to imagine a Cuba teeming with vehicles, neon lighting and advertising billboards, but this may be the direction brother Raúl is nudging the country. Whether modernisation can be achieved as in China, with economic but not political reform, is questionable. I find no-one prepared to discuss the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) - a group of women activists pressing for the release of dissident relatives jailed in 2003, but one 36-year-old maths teacher tells me: "I know I would never have been a teacher without the Revolución. I would probably have been slaving in the canefields, but I would like the right to travel abroad because travel is enriching, and I would like to say what I want to say and write what I want to write. Is that too much to ask?"

Everywhere, I hear, like a mantra, that "the Revolución always changes". Jesús Arencibia, a young journalist and poet, feels that perhaps Cuban socialism had been "too rigid", but the circumstances of his country's relationship with the US have conspired against any easy way out. Quoting the Cuban poet Cintio Vitier, he says the greatest challenge Cuba faced was to "build a parliament in a trench", but he adds: "We Cubans are heading for a much more normal and much fuller life."

As the country prepares for yet another "26 de julio", or Revolution Day, the sense of a society at ease with itself is palpable on the streets of Havana. I like the easy interaction between children and their parents, the mingling of habaneros on the Malecón, their friendly manner towards foreigners. These are values for which my mother loved the Cubans, and I find this spirit intact, nearly 50 years on.

Since my first visit, the Cubans have developed something new: a determination to help one another; a grit born of years of adversity, which may stand them in good stead in the equally difficult years ahead, when reforms may not bring about the instant improvement in their lives that some expect.

Before I leave, a group of youngsters ask me to take their picture on the Malecón. I do so in the knowledge they represent the future, and that I, the boy from Tarará, represent the past of a country that has never been so sure of its identity.

That may well be Fidel's legacy.

Andrew McLeod travelled to Cuba with Virgin Atlantic (www.virginatlantic.com, or 0870 380 2007)