Four decades on, Switzerland’s newest region is still growing up

Born in 1979, Switzerland’s youngest canton still owes much of its political and economic fate to the federal system that houses it. Four decades ago in Delémont, the small capital of the north-western Swiss canton of Jura, thousands gathered on the Place de la Liberté to celebrate the birth of a nation. “Citizens,” proclaimed François Lachat, the canton’s founding father – “victory!” After decades of strife, negotiation, and referendum, Jura had been accepted as an entity by its 25 new siblings, the other Swiss cantons, and on January 1, 1979, it seceded from Bern to become Switzerland’s youngest federal region. Forty years later on the square, the same, huge, 200-year-old linden tree still surges up from under the sloping cobbles; the even older Bernese-style fountain, an ironic reference to the former occupying force, still sits in front of the steps leading to the town hall; only a photo-friendly family of Chinese tourists, presumably a rarity in the 1970s, suggests time ... SWI swissinfo...