The present investigation responds to a relation of conceptual bases referring to local developments, identity territoriality, economic development and alternatives to development together with a description from the praxis from some life experiences starting from the history of identity, culture, and territory to identify the need that is perceived in the community of the municipality of Melgar in the department of Tolima, to recover identity and roots that allows to consider issues of local development subject to the autonomous use of space and the use of natural resources taking into account the potential endogenous factors such as economic and non-economic factors, social, cultural, historical, institutional and landscape resources, decisive factors in the process of local economic development according to their particularity