Declaración
Pública
Given the serious events that we have witnessed in recent days, the Council of Rectors has considered an institutional duty to be part of the reflection that the country is doing or should begin in the coming days.
Given our mission to train professionals and contribute to the generation of ideas for the various areas of national life, we consider that the events and behaviors observed, both due to their massiveness and violence, are giving unprecedented signs of a severe deterioration of legitimacy. social and political that every effective institutional order supposes. It is, therefore, a civic and moral challenge that universities cannot and should not ignore.
It is up to the universities, due to their character as autonomous institutions, which represent the various intellectual and cultural traditions of the country, to express without ambiguity 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 acts of violence and intolerance that we have observed in the social mobilizations that began last week.
The situation is already serious enough and its consequences uncertain to be treated as a simple alteration and threat of public order. Certainly, the restoration of that 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 can explain what is happening.
Our vocation for dialogue and respect for the diversity that every democratic society must embrace at the same time encourages us to express with the greatest emphasis that now more than yesterday we need a genuine and virtuous democratic deliberation, without opportunism or ill-earned advantages of one or the other. side. The institutions of democracy require our most loyal commitment today. To this end we want to contribute, putting at the service of Chile and the various political actors the capacities with which we can contribute to this 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 restore 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.