Celebrating the Old Ways : ALBUQUERQUE, <i> By Rudolfo Anaya (University of New Mexico Press: $19.95; 288 pp.)</i>

“Albuquerque” is an archetypal story of a young man’s initiation into self-acceptance and, finally, kinship with others. The truth offered in Rudolfo Anaya’s newest novel is deceptively simple: Tu eres tu. You are who you are.

In “Bless Me, Ultima,” “Heart of Aztlan,” “Tortuga,” “Silence of the Llano,” and his works of nonfiction, this extraordinary storyteller has always written unpretentiously but provocatively about identity. Every work is a “fiesta,” a ceremony preserving but reshaping old traditions that honor the power within the land and la raza , the people. One account in “Albuquerque” explains:

“It was in the fiestas of the people that I discovered the essence of my people, the Mexican heritage of my mother. There is a chronicle of life in the fiestas, beginning with baptism. La fiesta bautismo. I painted the padrinos at church as they held the baby over the font for the priest to bless el nino with holy water. In the faces of the padrino and madrina I saw and understood the godparents’ role. The padrinos would become the child’s second parents, and the familial kinship in the village or the barrio would be extended. La familia would grow.”

The exhilarating fiesta of “Albuquerque” is a splendid reading experience set in the contemporary city of Albuquerque, which, we learn, might have kept its original spelling if not for the Anglo stationmaster in the 1880s who remembered to paint both q’s but could not remember both r’s. In mixed admiration and disdain New Mexicans describe Albuquerque by saying, “It’s not Santa Fe.” Albuquerque, they mean, has not yet become a parody of itself but, for the sake of “economic development,” it soon could.

At a time when the future identity of the city seems to be exclusively in the hands of the politicians and other power brokers, a young ex-Golden Gloves champion, Abran Gonzalez, tries to solve the mysteries of his own past and future. He has very little information at hand, only cryptic legends about his dead mother, Cynthia Johnson. He has, as well, some of her paintings. Abran has been told that “she painted an honesty into the Hispanos that’s never been done before. Same faces you see on the street today, or in the villages. The gringo painters can’t do that. Not a one can get the soul of the people. She did. In her paintings you look into the soul of this land.”

All the strands of Abran’s life story, he finds, are held by others who, after his mother’s death, withhold information about the personality of his mother and the identity of his real father. He struggles to learn more about his mother and father’s choice to give him up for adoption. As he takes hold of more strands he is pulled across personal borders into new awareness: “He was a child of this border, a child of the line that separated white and brown. La raza called people like him ‘coyote.’ ”

A poignant element of the novel concerns how Abran’s friend, Joe Calabasa, a “coyote” of Santo Domingo Indian and Mexican blood, unselfishly involves himself in Abran’s search. Through these parts of the story new definitions of community emerge. Abran and Joe learn together the ways in which community and family might once more be linked by a lasting connection to “the earth and the rhythms of the people.”

He falls in love with Lucinda, whose family, like Abran’s, has old roots in the Albuquerque community. What results from meeting and coming to know Lucinda’s family is an understanding of the community’s identity that becomes more important to him than his individual identity.

“Albuquerque” is unflinchingly honest in its portrayal of class lines and ethnic lines, but it is also convincingly optimistic--even in 1992, in the golden age of cynicism. How is that possible?

One answer is that Anaya treats the contemporary value of the old ceremonies, the fiestas that have inexplicably lasted: the cleaning of the acequia on the Santo Domingo pueblo, the pilgrimage to the church at Chimayo, the healing methods of the curanderas like Nana and dona Tules, the stories retold by the old people like Juan Oso and by the new storytellers like Ben Chavez. In his patient, respectful portrayal of these ceremonies in “Albuquerque,” Anaya seems to passionately argue for them to be allowed to continue. The novel itself is a tribute to how storytelling traditions should be allowed to change and develop. Room must be made for all the ceremonies to co-exist in urban New Mexico, especially in cities like Albuquerque and Santa Fe--which Lucinda calls “Santa Fantasy.”

When Anaya writes of these ceremonies, the prose shimmers like the air of northern New Mexico, dense with golden dust and pollen. An entry from Abran’s mother’s diary recalls the haunting fiesta of la matanza (the killing of hogs for winter meat). After the young people have been unable to muster strength or wisdom enough to gracefully act their parts in the very old, brutal drama, the patriarch of the family, don Pedro, takes charge:

“When don Pedro had come face-to-face with the pig, he raised his hammer, and with the speed of a matador, there was a brief glint in the sunlight, the arc of his arm, a dull thud, and the pig jerked back and stiffened. The kill was complete and clean.

“It had taken all the old man’s strength to make the kill, but he had done it with grace. There was no loud thunder of the rifle, no crying children or barking dogs, just a clean kill. We stood hypnotized as don Pedro dropped to his knees in front of the quivering pig. Two of the men held the pig by the ears as don Pedro plunged the knife into the pig’s heart. The blood flowed swiftly.

” . . . When don Pedro withdrew the knife it seemed to come out spotless, unbloodied, and his hands were clean. Then the old man stood, and a shudder of fatigue passed through his frail body. He took a deep breath, and then sipped from the tin cup of water his wife handed him. He smiled at her, and when he looked at us, there was a serene beauty in his face.”

The minor characters in this disturbing, memorable story-within-the-story, don Pedro and tia Ramona, are among many vivid figures who collectively make up the personality of the community. In “Albuquerque” the community itself, with its contradictory history of physical brutality and spiritual beauty, is as vital a character as Abran.

The author is less successful in distinctively portraying the subplot of political satire involving the mayoral competition between Frank Dominic, Marisa Martinez, and Walter Johnson. They are ruthless, ruthless, and ruthless, respectively. The battles between them are replays of familiar Southwestern political power struggles involving land grants and water rights. This mayoral race culminates in predictable melodrama; however it ultimately does nothing to diminish the quiet, rewarding surprises throughout “Albuquerque . “

Like his friend, Ben Chavez, Abran Gonzalez discovers in the “violence and fear . . . at the core of every city” the healing effects of public and private ceremony. “Albuquerque” invites the reader into a fiesta: a cleansing, blessing journey of simple steps through old and complex paths.