Given the serious events that we have witnessed in recent days, the Council of Rectors has considered it an institutional duty to be part of the reflection that the country is doing or should begin in the coming days.

Given our mission of training professionals and contributing to the generation of ideas for the various areas of national life, we believe that the events and behaviors observed, both due to their massive nature and violence, are giving unprecedented signs of a severe deterioration in legitimacy. social and political that any effective institutional order entails. It is, therefore, a civic and moral question that universities cannot and should not ignore.

It is up to the universities, due to their character as autonomous institutions, which represent the country's diverse intellectual and cultural traditions, to clearly express both their recognition and appreciation of the right to social protest by peaceful means within the framework of democratic institutions, as well as their categorical and energetic rejection of the actions of violence and intolerance that we have observed in the social mobilizations that began last week.

The situation is already sufficiently serious and uncertain in its consequences to treat it as a simple disturbance and threat to public order. Certainly, reestablishing this order is a priority. In the same way, it would be regrettable and above all irresponsible not to make a serene and shared effort to identify the social, economic and cultural causes that could explain what is happening.

Our vocation for dialogue and respect for the diversity that every democratic society must embrace, impels us at the same time to express with the greatest emphasis that now more than yesterday we need genuine and virtuous democratic deliberation, without opportunism or ill-earned advantages of one or the other. other side. The institutions of democracy require our most loyal commitment today. To this purpose we want to contribute, putting at the service of Chile and the various political actors the capacities with which we can contribute to said deliberative process, as well as to the care and development of our democracy.

For these reasons, we call on all those who make up the national community to reestablish as soon as possible a climate of civic trust and peace in social coexistence to achieve a more edifying dialogue and a more inclusive democracy.

Monday 21 October of 2019