Last week, with the sending of two simple messages, a key battle in Argentine football's struggle against violence was lost.
Javier Cantero, the man who took on the barra bravas, resigned from his position as president of Independiente, one of the country's biggest clubs, last Wednesday morning. After a power struggle inside the club lasting almost two years, his position had become untenable.
As regular readers of my ESPNFC columns will be aware, the term barra brava might normally be translated as "hooligan" outside Argentina, but that's not strictly accurate. Based on 11 years following Argentine football and four years living here, I can tell you that the barras are highly organised, far wider in scope than English hooligan gangs ever were, and far more ingrained in the political makeup of Argentine football -- and, to an extent, of the country itself.
You could think of the most extreme element as organised crime groups who identify themselves with a club, and a recent BBC report talks about how the Brazilian Federal Police and members of the Interpol in Uruguay are worried about radical Argentine fans. Indeed, several barras have been tried and sentenced to jail terms as part of criminal groups.
In Argentina, clubs are owned by members who vote club presidents in for fixed terms. You'll already have worked out that in a situation where groups like the barras exist, there's huge scope for some unsavoury power games to take place. I'm often asked how the barras -- which are normally pretty small groups when taken as a proportion of the club's fan base -- are able to control club elections and internal politics.
The answer is that they don't have to control elections. There are examples of rule through intimidation, such as what infamously happened with Newell's Old Boys in 2008. Sometimes a president will be voted in who is effectively a barra puppet; sometimes there will be more distance. And I should point out that in some clubs, the violent element is far less of a problem than in others.
What happened with Independiente in 2011 shows that they try to rule through intimidation. One of Argentina's proudest clubs -- they've won the Copa Libertadores more times than anyone else -- was in institutional crisis, with a failing team and an unfinished stadium (paid for by Sergio Agüero's transfer to Atlético de Madrid, but the money ran out, leaving one stand unfinished).
Cantero fought to be elected by the club in late 2011 on the back of numerous promises to rebuild the club, but one issue ended up taking centre stage.
As election day neared, Pablo "Bebote" Álvarez (the nickname means "Big Baby"), the head of Independiente's barra, announced, "if Cantero wins, I'm leaving."
Cantero's response was unequivocal: "If he leaves, he'll be doing Independiente a favour. When we're in charge, things are going to change; the barra won't be given a single peso."
Cantero won those elections, and a statement had been made by Independiente's fan base; rarely if ever in Argentine football had a club's members stood so united against the barra. Sure enough, just after Christmas, Álvarez announced via Facebook (yes, really) that he was resigning as the head of the barra. It would be far from the last everyone would see of him, though.
That's because Cantero, in his eagerness to make a stand against the violence affecting not just his own club but the whole of Argentine football, took his eye off the ball -- literally. He concentrated so much on off-pitch matters that, by his own admission, he made mistakes elsewhere, notably in sticking with Cristian Diaz as manager for too long.
In August 2012, Cantero brought in Florencia Arietto, a lawyer, as the club's head of security. Come February 2013, with the club already looking doomed to relegation, she resigned after an argument over whether a fan group should be allowed into the stadium. Cantero insisted the group hadn't caused problems, but Arietto believed they posed a security risk. Already isolated by a lack of support from other club presidents, Cantero now looked more impractical than ever.
River Plate's relegation in 2011 left Independiente and Boca Juniors as the only two clubs in Argentina never to suffer relegation. That was until last year, when el Diablo lost that proud record.
Unsurprisingly, "Big Baby" returned, leading the barra into the terrace for the first game of the campaign, and he has spent most of the club's season in the second tier making a nuisance of himself. Álvarez even appeared in front of TV news cameras to argue with the team president face to face outside the club's headquarters.
The episode that finally brought about Cantero's resignation perfectly illustrates the issues mentioned earlier of political intrigue and vested interests.
With the club struggling to gain promotion, sitting just out of the promotion slots (their best chance of top-flight football could be a league reorganisation planned for next year, though that's best left for another article), it's no surprise that even the ordinary fans who sympathise with Cantero's stance on the barras have become less tolerant of him.
In March, Álvarez turned up at Independiente's headquarters and announced he wanted to stand for club president. Two days later, an opposition group led by Hugo Moyano, the leader of Argentina's most powerful workers' union and a major opponent at present of the national government, offered to take charge of the club.
"I doubt it's a coincidence ... it looks like a smokescreen," said Gustavo Grabia, an expert on the problem of violence in Argentine football, to a local radio station.
Another option as the next club president, though he's been mentioned much more quietly, is Julio Grondona Jr. Grondona Sr. is the president of the Argentine FA and a vice-president of FIFA. The Grondonas are Independiente fans. Grondona Jr. is the current president of Arsenal de Sarandí (a club his dad founded), and it would be safe to assume that there would be a staggered opinion if any Grondona took a Cantero-like stance against the barras at any club.
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For now, though, only one thing seems clear: Independiente's next president may or may not be better in footballing terms than Cantero (in truth, he'll struggle to be worse). But off the pitch, Argentine football needs more Canteros. He wasn't perfect, but he'll be missed.