This work takes the experience from two community councils: the Rio Quito in the Choco and La Toma in the Northern Cauca, to review how these communities have been organized around the protection and administration of their territories. The paper develops a comparative analysis that takes as its starting point the understanding of the territory as a social and collective construction. From this perspective, it inquiries about the main threats affecting each of the territories and the corresponding strategies that communities have appropriated collectively for the defense and protection of their territory and therefore their lifestyles