Duque de Caxias

Duque de Caxias has the second-highest GDP in Rio de Janeiro state and some of the worst living conditions in the metropolitan region—a contradiction explained by one word: refinery. REDUC (Refinaria Duque de Caxias), Petrobras's second-largest refinery, processes 242,000 barrels of crude oil daily, generating tax revenue that places Caxias among Brazil's 30 wealthiest municipalities by GDP. The wealth does not reach the population.

The city sits in the Baixada Fluminense lowlands, 27 kilometers north of Rio de Janeiro. Named after Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, the Duke of Caxias (patron saint of the Brazilian Army), the municipality grew as a dormitory for workers priced out of Rio's formal housing market. With 818,000 residents, it is the third most populous city in Rio de Janeiro state, and much of its territory consists of dense, underserved neighborhoods with chronic flooding, limited sanitation, and high crime rates.

REDUC's tax contributions create a fiscal paradox. The municipality collects royalties and ISS (service tax) from petrochemical operations that inflate its per capita GDP statistics, but these revenues have not translated into proportional infrastructure or social investment. The surrounding industrial zone—including chemical plants, natural gas processing, and logistics operations along the Washington Luís Highway—employs workers but exposes neighborhoods to pollution and industrial risk.

Duque de Caxias is the extractive periphery within a metropolitan region. Like mining towns that generate national wealth while their residents live in poverty, Caxias processes Rio's petrochemical metabolism while bearing the environmental and social costs. The refinery operates regardless of who governs; the living conditions improve only incrementally. The city demonstrates that GDP is a measure of throughput, not welfare—a lesson that biological ecology understood long before economics.