deep and narrow Pichoux Gorge. Warm air blows into my face, rising from the more densely populated, intensely farmed stretch of plain between Bassecourt and Delémont, where I discover a different type of Jura. One that is a little less bolshie and more business minded. Ahead of me I see the A16, an 85-kilometre-long motorway that traverses the Jura, starting in Biel in the canton of Berne and ending in Boncourt on the French border. Also referred to as the ‘Transjura’, the A16 cost 6.6 billion Swiss francs to build not only because of Jura’s complicated geology but also on account of the many bridges and tunnel portals aesthetically designed along the route by Ticino architect Flora Ruchat-Roncati. Construction began shortly after Jura’s inauguration as a canton. It finished in 2017. The A16 was a federal project to connect the underdog border region with the vibrant economic hubs of the Central Plateau, or Mittelland. There is no real statistical evidence to prove whether the Transjura now serves its original purpose. Switzerland’s population is booming, whereas Jura’s is more or less stagnating. With higher-than-average unemployment, Jura contributes less to the Swiss economy than most cantons. The canton’s finances are less than rosy. It makes you wonder whether the physical lifeline of the Transjura has actually encouraged a sort of brain drain. Jura historian Clément Crevoisier would probably say it has. Crevoisier has been studying his canton for decades. Jura’s linguistic and geographic isolation is a big problem, he says. Its population doesn’t even feel much affinity with the rest of French-speaking Switzerland. Young people move away to university – often never to return. But Crevoisier also believes that decades of separatist thinking has created a mental block that prevents Jura from realising its full potential. “Unfortunately, the ideological urge to view everything in black and white ignores Jura’s multicultural roots.” More myth than reality? Jura’s former cantonal government minister Jean-François Roth also worries about the inertia that has beset his canton. “Jura has calmed down quite a bit,” he said on the 50th anniversary of the historic 1974 vote. “I’m not convinced our canton still embodies the idea that people had when it was founded.” But is that idea more myth than reality nowadays, buffeted by the crosswinds of economic growth? I arrive in Jura’s capital Delémont and leave my bike in a small, unassuming pedestrian precinct opposite the station. Writer Camille Rebetez is based in Delémont. Until recently, he was working as the art mediator at the ambitious Théâtre du Jura. His parents helped to open Café du Soleil in Saignelégier. Rebetez co-authored a comic called “Les Indociles” (The Troublemakers), which was adapted last year into a series of the same name for Swiss television. “Les Indociles” follows the exploits of three friends in Jura’s Franches-Montagnes district who, from the 1970s onwards, unshackle themselves from societal constraints to create a community based on equality. Their idealism makes painful acquaintance with reality and the frailties of humanity. “My characters are at the mercy of liberal economics,” Rebetez told the press when the last comic was published. “They must learn how to lose without losing hope. They are unable to save the world but keep fighting for their chance to do so.” Fifty years after the 1974 vote, the same could be said about Jura. The mood was fractious in November 1969, when young Jura separatists burned hundreds of copies of the controversial red “Civil Defence” booklet in front of the Federal Palace. Photo: Keystone Members of the Béliers group wanted to block the entrance to Berne’s city hall in 1971, but the police had other ideas. Photo: Keystone Swiss Review / October 2024 / No.5 7
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