 A number of Anaya critics and at least one Chicana novelist view his young protagonist's path to adolescence as a spiritual search for a personal identity.The result embodies the synergistic integration of both the cultural and biological aspects of his indigenous and European inheritances as the creation of something new.Antonio's successful quest provides the world with a new model of cultural identity —a new American "Mestizaje" for the "American Mestizo" known as the "Chicano."