The statue of the Christ of the Andes commemorates the termination of a sixty-year boundary controversy that on several occasions brought Argentina and Chile to the brink of war. The dispute amicably resolved by King Edward VII of England in 1902 grew out of the Treaty of 1881, in which the two nations agreed for the first time on the boundaries in Patagonia, and in the Straits of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego, that we take for granted today. The dispute that preceded the Treaty of 1881 was long and bitter. For although Patagonia and the adjacent areas were without question possessions of the Spanish crown, official neglect throughout the colonial period had denied to either successor state a clear title over them based on uti possidetis.