In her personal diary, Lien Estrada describes her emotional exhaustion in communist Cuba, likening it to a Caribbean concentration camp. She draws inspiration from Second World War documentaries and war literature to develop daily survival strategies. She expresses frustration over internet restrictions and yearns for change to ease current hardships.
Lien Estrada, a Cuban writer, shares in Havana Times her reflections as she approaches her fiftieth year amid mounting hardships. She feels worn down and sadder than steady, but seeks to lift her spirits by recalling survivors of Nazi concentration camps. 'If there were people who survived those Nazi concentration camps, it means that I can survive my Caribbean communist concentration camp,' she writes.
Estrada voraciously consumes documentaries and films on the Second World War, available from Cuba's widespread 'movie banks.' She also reads 'Company K' by William March, a novel about the First World War that leaves her grateful and committed to peace. She overhears someone close wishing for 'the Yanks' to arrive and end the blackouts while stocking stores with affordable food, echoing a broader longing for external saviors—be they Chinese, Russians, or even extraterrestrials.
Faced with powerlessness, she plans survival strategies drawn from wartime conditions: 'How do you survive in swampy trenches without food? How do you function with hunger, fear, and even terror?'. She bemoans restrictions on her 'internet de palo,' controlled by the Communist Party, and avoids national networks, Google, and Facebook due to surveillance fears. Lacking military friends, she turns to literature like 'Alone with the Enemy' by Yury Dold-Mikhailik to cope with the oppressive system. Estrada hopes communism will end soon, perhaps this year.
