Getting back to our roots.

It is easy enough to define the physical borders of the Mendrisiotto region, from the Brusino frontier crossing to the head of the Valley of Muggio. But, for all this geographical competence, we find it difficult to accurately place the border line between past and present, between agricultural civilization and modern life. Maybe we imagine the dividing line between these two worlds as running through the mid-twentieth century. But, paradoxically, it is more likely an icon of progress – the tractor – that divides the physically demanding world of our grandparents, with spades, hoes and oxen, from that of us grandchildren, increasingly regulated by the "horsepower" of the internal combustion engine. The countryside has gradually become depopulated.

Traffic has increased, as has the service sector. Look, for example, at the photographs of the Plain of San Martino, then all greenery, now crammed with buildings and throbbing with industry. Roads have multiplied, motorways have arrived, from Chiasso northwards, from Mendrisio to Stabio, traffic everywhere. The rural life of the Mendrisiot-to came to an end with Gino Pedroli, who has left us an extraordinary record of that period in his photography, and lives on in the memories of Angelo Frigerio, who takes us back to a time of silkworms, of tobacco leaves hung out on balconies to dry, of maize and harvest time; of grandmothers in courtyards husking corncobs and telling their rosary beads, and men at the tavern, on high days and holidays, playing bowls or "scopa". The one constant is the character of our people, still the most jovial in the whole of Switzerland.