Why Cuba's last Harley mechanic is still in hog heaven
Published Date: 18 January 2009
By JOSHUA ROBINSON
IN HAVANA
SERGIO Morales' friends gently rib him about the dirt under his
fingernails and the grease that fills every line in his 58-year-old
hands. The grease has been there so long, they tell him, that it must
pre-date Fidel Castro's revolution.
But Morales has heard all the jokes and not a single one makes him look
up from his work.
He just shifts his cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other as
his fingers twist and caress the tools in front of him, granting new
life to one
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of the few Harley-Davidson motorcycles that remain in Cuba. Like
Morales, and possibly the gunk on his hands, they too pre-date the 1959
revolution.
Morales is the last mechanic here making his living by fixing them the
old-fashioned Cuban way, with homemade parts to preserve a nugget of
Americana in the alleys of Havana.
Harleys are believed to have arrived in Cuba as early as the 1920s,
according to Martin Jack Rosenblum, the former historian of the
Harley-Davidson Motor Company. Durable and powerful, they became
standard issue for the military and the police.
But after the revolution – and the US trade embargo that followed – the
supply of Harleys and parts dried up. Soon, most of the bikes fell into
disrepair or were smuggled out of Cuba. Today, Morales said, there are
fewer than 100 here. Cared for properly, however, the old Harleys will
last seemingly forever.
"These engines are practically immortal," Morales said, adding that
rebuilding an engine takes him between one and two years, given the need
to fashion his own parts.
Morales' love affair with Harleys began in 1972, when he began fooling
around with them as a young mechanic. Since 1959, they had built a
reputation for being cheap, though hard to keep running. Policemen were
given the opportunity to buy their bikes from the department for less
than $40 as the pool of roughly 2,000 Harleys at the time of the
revolution slowly dwindled. Far more common were the East German MZs.
"At first, we realised we just needed them to get around," Morales said
of the Harleys. "We couldn't buy MZs – you had to be a student – and we
didn't have any dough. Then we got to liking them because they were
tough bikes. Even without new parts, we figured out how to make the old
ones last."
Picking up tips from a few old mechanics who had once worked for
Harley-Davidson in Cuba and fashioning his own spare parts from bits of
the cheap communist-built cars around Cuba, Morales began to learn his
way around Harleys the way others learned musical instruments.
"It must have been the only country in the world where poor people could
buy Harleys," Morales said.
But the first Harley he bought was not one everybody could afford. He
found a 1946 Knucklehead Servicar. Originally used by repairmen for
house calls, Servicars were fitted with three wheels and a small box on
the back for carrying parts and tools. Morales had to have it but,
because it was in excellent condition, spent not $40 but $1,200, which
amounted to six months' salary for him at the time.
"In Cuba, it's an entirely different relationship," Rosenblum said.
"It's not about the fine art worship of the machine as a rolling
sculpture, but a reverence for the bike as something cool and something
useful."
On the walls of his house Morales has American flags, a few motorcycle
association plaques and a large plate that reads: "God created the world
in seven days, and on the eighth, he created Harley-Davidson."
He acquired most of his memorabilia in the past two decades, after the
Cold War began to thaw out. When information from the West began to
trickle in around 1990, Morales was able to get his hands on a
Harley-Davidson repair manual. They were the first instructions on
Harley care he had ever seen in writing.
"We learned a lot of important technical things," Morales said. "But we
had already learned pretty much everything just from doing it."
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