The Spanish Revival and the significance of the "last frontier": an attempt to mitigate the Americanization process Both Spanish and American colonial powers utilized Neoclassical architecture as an instrument of propaganda. In the same manner that the style served in times of Spain to signify an oppressive police order, the American government used it to signify the insertion of Puerto Ricans into the American way of life. While Neoclassical architecture gave permanence to colonial status, American architects introduced the Spanish Revivals. As the decades passed, the Spanish Revivals became ingrained within the Puerto Rican identity. Its study therefore holds important cultural and political implications for Puerto Rico, since both the predominant political power (the Americans) and the rising Puerto Rican separatist groups thought of the Spanish Revivals as representative of their ideals. The former saw it as an effective way to create a model to sustain and justify cultural coexistence, and the latter, as the axis of their cultural identity and "Puerto Ricanness." In both instances, Puerto Ricans tried to selectively retrieve their Spanish heritage, amidst feelings of nostalgia and retrospective idealizations of past times. By the turn of the last century, Puerto Rico had become the southernmost extension of the American Empire. It "belonged to the United States but it is not the United States, nor part of the United States." 8 The Island became a trading post, where American expansionism would have a captive market, a great colony "governing itself, flying our flag and trading with us..." 9 It is no wonder that one of the Spanish Revivals used for the new institutions in Puerto Rico came from American past experiences with the continental frontiers. The Americanization of Puerto Ricans began not only with the utilization of the Neoclassical styles, but also with the styles of the Spanish-Americans: the California Mission Revival. The Mission Revival prevailed during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Its forms were used by the Protestant institutions, schools, private business and in the design of houses. Even though Americans associated the style with Spain, Puerto Ricans did not. Fig. 6 California Mission Revival. The Ponce Methodist Church at Villa Street, Ponce, Puerto Rico by Antonin Nechodoma, 1907. Protestant churches, a new and foreign institution in a Catholic Puerto Rico, were frequently designed in this style. Antonin Nechodoma, a resident architect from Chicago, first used the Mission Revival in his design for the Ponce Methodist Church in 1907 and in the design of a YMCA building for the town of Fajardo (c. 1910). He referred to the Mission Revival as the "Spanish American style" and argued that it "evolved from the rather primitive forms of the original quasi-Spanish buildings of this section..." 10 Fig. 7 California Mission Revival. Building for the YMCA at Fajardo, Puerto Rico, Antonin Nechodoma, c. 1910. The public school system, which was transplanted from the mainland, served as the main vehicle for Americanization. In 1908, concrete schoolhouses were designed in the Mission Revival style. Many of these designs were done outside Puerto Rico by the firm of Clarke, Howe and Homer of Rhode Island, including the José Julián Acosta School in Old San Juan. 11 Fig. 8 California Mission Revival. José Julian Acosta School at San Juan, Puerto Rico. Clarke, Howe and Homer, Architects, 1908.