If I could live in another century (Vanesa NA2)

In this essay, I propose to take my readers on a journey back in time. Films have suggested the time machine’s existence: Back to the future or Crusade in Jeans are good examples. If I could get in one of these marvelous inventions, I would travel to the twentieth century, more concretely, to the 1960’s in USA.

Maybe this is just a short trip, but I consider that the 60’s in the USA have been the most fascinating time in our history. A time full of love and music, a time when we believed that the rules were to be broken and nothing would stop our desire for freedom. If I could move to that time, I would have excited when man walked on the moon and Bob Dylan sang Blowing in the Wind, while all of us looked peacefully to Vietnam.

Without a doubt, I would have been a devoted fan of The Beatles and I would have shouted hysterically together with millions of girls in the JFK Airport, when the Fab Four came to conquer all the American hearts with their shaggy hair waving about wildly. Probably, the Woodstock music festival, celebrated in 1969, would have been an unavoidable appointment. Can you imagine listening to Jimi Hendrix, The Who or Joan Baez in the same scenery? This Festival became a symbol of the revolution against traditional values and I would not have minded being part of that movement.

A time of innocence and hope soon faded when the young president Kennedy, symbol of an inspiring future, was senselessly murdered in 1963. An American young girl like me would have cried in front of Capitol where she, with all of nation, would have felt that their hopes died, too. A similar emotion when another social and politic symbol, Martin Luther King Jr, was assassinated. But the words of this leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement will walk with us forever: “I have a dream” and we have to think that the dream has not died, another world is possible.

The 1960’s in the USA was a decade of hope and changes, but also a decade full of broken promises. Otherwise, this nation marked the course of the world and I would have loved to be part of such a magical time.