This document provides a research conducted in the towns of Nueva Venecia and Buena Vista, townships found in the ‘Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta’ (Colombia), in a territory where the state has a partially differentiated reached. This paper tries to make a critical account of the effectiveness of affirmative state action to overcome the material inequality that characterizes this population, the differential inputs of public authorities, and multilateral private intervention as means that sometimes replace public power. The research method deployed covered surveys of the population, defining the size of the sample by means of simple random sampling for non-finite populations; similarly, semi-structured in-depth interviews were applied. Applications were made to public and private entities that have developed activities in the community or issue and implement public policies, and re-describes based on the documentary work the history and context of the populations analyzed.