Las Ropas Americanas

Las Ropas Americana

On our very first day in San Isidro de El General, my instincts of bargain shopping kicked in. A magnetic pull drew me from our parked car to four blocks up and three blocks over to find a large shop with a sign overhead proclaiming “Las Ropas Americana!” It was a thrift store.

Unlike a lot of North Americans, it seems that most urban women in Costa Rica – regardless of age or shape – wear high heels and skin-tight capris, little halters, miniscule skirts, or high-riding shorts that barely cover much of anything. Even grandmothers look as if their clothes were spray-painted on. I am noticeable on the streets for my jeans and non-clinging tops. I feel frumpy.

The clothing in this thrift shop was interesting – besides loose blouses, long skirts, baggy dresses mixed in with summer attire, there were also wool sweaters, tweed jackets, corduroy pants and a few ski jackets mixed in. Since then I’ve found four more Ropas de America type stores in San Isidro. There were also two quickly noticed in San Vito.

I browse and ponder how so many North American touristas could have come to Costa Rica, found the weather so utterly perfect with its near constant 75-degrees, and discarded what they didn’t need. They shed their warmest clothes, adopted the Costa Rican look, or realized they brought too much in the first place? Besides racks of clothing, each of these places also has huge bins that are churned over by many shoppers who shop ringside. So many thrift shops and so much clothing!

Two weeks ago when we were going down the mountain to town, two villages over I noticed a sign in a house window that hadn’t been there before – “Ropas Americanas”. This house was connected to a pulperia. We stopped and an elderly woman came out from her kitchen with a large black plastic bag heaped with clothes. I picked through a few things on top, but really, like other touristos, we’d brought too many clothes and there is nothing we need. We thanked her and as we made our escape she kept trying to press the entire bag on us while talking rapido en Espanol. Were we supposed to buy the whole bag? Or was she asking us to take the bag to town for her?

The next time we came through we stopped at the pulperia. The woman was happy to see us again. Her daughter was visiting and she could speak a little English. Her mother, Maria, is starting a clothing store, she told me, and she had been asking us to look through to help set the prices. We talked a little while and before leaving, Pecos asked for a pack of cigarettes, using a tangled, self-invented mix of Espanol and English. Maria asked, uno? Si, said Pecos, proud to be able to hold up his end of the conversation at last. Maria reached into a cup on the store shelf, handed him one cigarette and told him the cost. Chagrined, he accepted it.

Yesterday in San Isidro I found yet another Ropas de America type store down a side street. As I stepped past the open front (like most stores, no front wall and a steel garage door for closure at night), a large truck pulled up. Two men jumped out, opened the back of it and with crow bars pulled out a wired, 5-ft. square bale of tightly packed clothes and rags that they dropped on the street. When the store owner clipped the wires the bale sprang up with a big pop. I asked him where all these clothes came from – de touristas, possiblo? and he said, no, from Los Angeles, from the Goodwill. But the shoes, he signaled, come from somewhere else and he will not say. Mystery at least partly solved.