The additional 2,000 troops will help the army patrol a 9,000km border with Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia in a jungle region used by drug traffickers and illegal miners, loggers and smugglers, General Ricardo Costa Neves said.

“They will reinforce our operations in this vast area to help combat border and environmental crimes,” the four-star infantry general said in a rare media interview.

The dispute arising from Venezuela’s claim over Guyana’s oil-rich Esequibo region has already led the Brazilian army to send more soldiers, armoured cars, and artillery to the border state of Roraima with the creation of a new regiment there.

“The border situation made us bring forward some changes that were in our strategic plan. We are practically tripling our mechanised infantry, armoured vehicles, and artillery in Roraima,” Costa Neves said.

The reinforcement will include the creation of two permanently deployed forward bases inside the Yanomami reservation on the Uraricoera and Mucajai rivers and major access routes for wildcat gold miners that have invaded the territory.

The miners brought disease, destruction of the rainforest, and armed violence to the isolated Yanomami lands bordering Venezuela, causing malnutrition and deaths. Brazil’s government last year declared a humanitarian emergency and sent a task force to remove an estimated 20,000 miners.

But gold miners began to return after the armed forces scaled back their operations and failed to enforce a no-fly zone for planes flying them to clandestine jungle airstrips, environmental enforcement agents told Reuters.

Costa Neves said the army will have a permanent presence at two new bases providing logistical support to environmental, Indigenous and health agencies, besides repressing illegal activities within a 150km zone from the border.

The general, who commanded the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Monusco) in 2020-2021, rejected criticism of the military’s failure to secure the Yanomami territory last year.

“We airlifted 600 tonnes of food and supplies that were dropped by parachute to Indigenous communities. It was the largest airlift operation in the Brazilian Air Force’s history,” he said.

With the support of the military, 80% of the miners were evicted, some 80 dredging barges were blown up, and 22 planes seized or destroyed, Costa Neves said.

The armed forces on their own distributed 36,000 food parcels, medivacked 206 patients out of 6,000 Yanomami attended, and arrested 165 suspects for environmental crimes, he said.