The 2016 Rio Olympics start next month, and the lead-up is getting downright gruesome. A couple weeks ago, mutilated body parts washed up on Copacabana Beach, just meters away from the Olympic beach volleyball court. Before that, a Brazilian military official slayed Juma — a captive jaguar trotted out to drum up excitement for the games — during the Olympic torch relay.

These ghastly quirks seem to set these games apart. But Rio 2016 just extends practices that have become common in twenty-first-century Olympiads.

In fact, the killing of Juma may well be an apt — if grim — metaphor for working people stuck in today’s Olympic cities: sentient beings restrained in the service of a militarized spectacle that’s rigged to benefit the rich. The Olympics are a bonanza for the ruling class, and Rio shows us this in an extreme form.