For one panicked moment I thought they were headed toward us. Then Rafael tugged me back into the crowd and I realized that the grotesquely enhanced soldiers were simply passing by. There were four of them in total, moving in tight formation around a man in a sweeping feather cape and a jade-encrusted headdress. Huge gold plugs distended his ears and his otherwise bare chest was covered with a heavy gold pectoral. His loincloth looked like it was made of real fur—jaguar, by its gold hue and pattern of dark spots—and he wore gilded sandals on his feet.