Article discusses three life stories to understand the effects that the civil wars in the former department Bolivar. On the one hand, tries to overcome the traditional view that has made a career and having to Coast as a remote region of national conflicts of the XIX century, and on the other, the different intentions that hid the entrance to the various faces are shown who participated in the wars. Thus, turning to the experiences of the landowner Manuel Burgos, bishop Pedro Maria Revollo black and Joaquin Mercado Robles, a number of individual and collective motivations that moved among men in the region to join the conflict scenarios are studied: the desire to maintain or strengthen the economic power, the intention to defend and propagate the political-religious discourse of Catholicism and the struggle to break the racial structures to achieve social mobility and political power.