Bruna Martinelli – "Era così – It was just like that"

The farmer and writer Bruna Martinelli is a chronicler of change in Ticino. She says of herself: "I feel like a survivor."

There is a girl standing on a rock, with provocative and daring eyes, rake in hand, she looks like a photographer and looks like Marianne. Cultural icon of the French Republic. Speaking of the photography of one of his books, Bruna Martinelli, over 90, laughs. "I was about 13 or 14 years old at the time, even though I looked older, you were growing faster than today."

Even as a "child" children, they had to work hard, says the author. "Even the little girls carried manure, wood, hay, and food to the mountains, where they had to look after the cattle, and in the winter they washed clothes in the icy waters of the Maggia."

But she also remembers the small pleasures, for example when she was invited to lunch with her "god" on Sunday. "The smell of their clothes is still present to me today: they smelled of hay, apples and after fire from the hearth."

The strength of women

Bruna Martinelli was born in 1926 in Avegno TI. She grew up in a poor peasant family and remained a farmer all her life. She says of herself: "I feel like a survivor." Since she's always loved books, today she still manages the village library. Now she is sitting in her kitchen on one of those wet spring days when the clouds of the Valle Maggia hang between the rock walls.

But Bruna Martinelli's eyes shine and her face shines when she speaks of the past. Hard work and stern mother, but also pranks she made with her wild cousins. She spent a lot of time with them. "Our greatest pleasure was to throw pumpkins in front of the train – then it splashed on all sides when it rolled on."

"The train" is the Vallemaggia train, which then connected the valley to Locarno and already long extinguished. Bruna Martinelli is a chronicler of changes in Ticino – which she painstakingly describes in her book "Fra le pieghe del tempo" (In the folds of time), based on her experiences and portraits of the small world of Valle Maggia.

Sie is also a chronicler of the difficult life of women in Ticino in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. In her bilingual work "La forza delle donne – La force des femmes", she uses portraits of women from her family or her neighborhood to describe the living conditions of the Ticino women of the time. She sees the "feminine condition" with a clear but affectionate look, does not make women victims, but gives them dignity and strength through her description.

"Although women in the rural society of this time, which some people have the idea of ​​being idyllic, meant little, no household could exist unless it did not happen. there is a mother, an aunt or a grandmother taking the reins. " 19659005] And yet women have done little: "We often talk today about equality between men and women – my grandmother would say that the world went crazy – according to her, women had to obey, work , save and never, never have they put their hands on their knees, they have been left with the heaviest loads and the most painful jobs, many of them a little more than the cattle in the l '. stable. "

Always flourishing fantasy

Farmer's wife with body and soul, Martinelli was and always was a woman of the word, literacy. Magda, her daughter, remembers not only the beauty of her mother and the way she made beautiful clothes for the kids and the little things that existed, but also the fact that there were always books in the house – and stains. Even if you went to the pasture in the summer to graze the cattle. "One of my best memories of her is when she was milking at the barn, and I was able to sit down with her with my unpopular math, that she even mimed. explained as the bucket of milk filled. "

Despite all the tough Bruna Martinelli has never forgotten the work of other sides of life. This also expresses in their way of writing: what do the shadows of a rock, the smells or the color schemes like after a summer storm, all the beauties of the valley look like? , where you have to laboriously rinse the essential. Her daughter remembers that parents often eat quickly and then continue to work immediately. Bruna Martinelli does not complain. "Era cosi – it was just like that."

Bruna Martinelli says – no: she gushes out stories, like a Ticino Bach after a heavy torrential rain. She has just overcome two heart attacks. "But at the hospital we treated with so much love, it was amazing, because even the doors opened of their own!"

She did not know how to be sick before. Do not be treated. It's always something special. In thanks, she wrote a story during the hospital stay. On unpopular hospital shirts, which can only be closed at the back.

She sums it up: "One day, two of the shirts were so annoyed that they are always disrespectful and everyone complains about them, so they are in an unguarded room and they came out the night through villages and cities and have lived many adventures, and when the sun rose in the morning, they remembered that the cotton that they came from Mexico, they traveled far and are citizens of the world. "

She laughs. "I've always had an overflowing imagination," she says, not without irony. But then she adds, "You know, what was the best part of heart problems? I was taken by helicopter to the hospital! I love flying helicopters, but it was worth it! "

Author: Barbara Hofmann, sfd