Representatives of the Salesian Institutions of Higher Education and Interculturality Network (RIUSE for its acronym in Spanish) organized the talk "Health crisis, indigenous people and migrants: fighting racism and iniquity from the university", to analyze the national situation of each institution in relation to the difficulties arising from virtual teaching. 

The speakers were Fernando Garcés and Sebastián Granda, professors from Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Ecuador; José Sarmento and Eva Ferreira from Universidad Católica Don Bosco, Brazil; Silvia Castillo and Simona Mayo from Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez de Chile. They shared a vision of the problems they have in common as a region in relation to interculturality, tensions and possibilities regarding racism and inequality, which has been deepened by the context of the pandemic.

Garcés talked about indigenous higher education, focusing on recent public policies on access, budget and permanence. He spoke about the internships in the Bilingual Intercultural Education (EIB) program and recalled that "Father Juan Bottasso created the professionalization program for bilingual teachers before the creation of the EIB degree in UPS in 1994. The program strengthens indigenous education of our country. "

Granda, spoke about the actions that the EIB program has implemented to support the teaching process during the emergency. "One of the advantages is that we have already been working online for two years, which means teachers and students have experience. The situation is hard and it forces us to be more creative than before, the key is to work in virtual classrooms, learning resources or new methodologies, considering the context of students. That is the great challenge", he stated. 

Sarmento and Ferreira spoke about their experience in the "Languages and Knowledge" program, which has been working for 15 years with indigenous communities and professors from other universities in Mato Groso del Sur, Brazil.

Then, Mayo, presented the scenario of indigenous people from Chile. "Indigenous life and their way of thinking do not have any constitutional recognition, it is highly precarious, we need education as a human right and to work based on three approaches: critical interculturality, justice and social education".  Castillo stated that despite the work that has been carried out, it is still an imperative need to strengthen the intercultural approach.

The RIUSI Network is made up of Universidad Politécnica Salesiana del Ecuador, la Universidad Católica Don Bosco (UCDB) de Campo Grande, en Brasil and Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez (UCSH) en Santiago de Chile.