To identify forms of interaction between the members of the Chocó, Tumaco, Guapi and Buenaventura colonies, understand the relationships among identity, ethnic and racial coexistence in the interaction and highlight some forms of symbolic capital arising from knowledge, history and shared social space in the colonies, we conducted an investigative exercise based on popular education. We turned to three individuals who are representative of the Bonaverense culture—Mary, Flor and Edgardo— whose collective and individual histories will allow us to identify which factors of ethnic and racial identity inherited from the colonial era are the basis for power relations from the past to the present and underlie the identity processes of communities that have been historically subdued and silenced to hear their stories in their own words, expose their ways of seeing the world and value their voices as sources of knowledge