Indigenous Culture's Influence on the State

After reading these two chapters, the basic thesis that I am finding is the emphasis on the relationship between the Indians and the state as the most important determinant of the Guatemalan social order. (I have been doing a lot of readings on power and what causes history to occur as it does based on the philosophies of Marx, Gramsci, and Weber. anyone familiar?) There is a culturalist perspective to the question of power and also a call to the neglect of local indigenous culture's influence on the state. Far from being mere creations of the state and economic order, corporate indigenous communities have themselves, through violent and passive resistance, been a key factor in shaping the very nature of the state. I read a little of the intro and on page 12 we are initially told that the state is autonomous. Therefore, how are the interests of the Ladino oligarchy and military expressed through the state? From a Marzists standpoint, the state is an instrument of direct class oppression. There is also a question of how the position of the indigenous plays into the role of the state. The position of the indigenous may argue that the Indian-Ladino relations are the most important determinate of social relations. That the state-community relationship is but one manifestation of the ethnic rivalry. Each set of views makes sense however falter by their prioritization of one level of social reality over any other (Weber). Maybe a way out of this conundrum is not to propose either class, ethnicity, or state-community relations as the fundamental determinant (Weber) but to treat all as a part of a whole that is completely interconnected, with each factor asserting only a contextual hegemony(Gramsci).