By DAN KEANE | Associated Press
July 22, 2007

EL ALTO, Bolivia - Those stained T-shirts and stretched-neck sweaters you clean out of your closet may one day wind up heaped waist-high on a plastic tarp in this chilly Andean city's vast outdoor market.

Clothes given to charities in the United States and Europe are often sold and delivered to the developing world, where each year $1.2 billion in used clothing sent from wealthy nations are rummaged through by poor shoppers in search of a bargain.

It's a business that Bolivian President Evo Morales considers shameful. In April, his Andean country became the 32nd nation to ban or restrict used clothing imports in an attempt to protect native clothing industries.

Applauded and jeered for the striped Bolivian sweater he wore to meet presidents and kings worldwide after his 2005 election, Morales understands well that clothes make the man.

"Bolivia Dignified" is an all-purpose motto Morales applies to everything from nationalizing energy to overturning an international ban on high-altitude soccer games, and persuading Bolivians to shed U.S. hand-me-downs fits his vision perfectly.

"It's impossible to think that we can be dignified if, in the name of poverty, we wear clothing that has been thrown out in another country," Ramiro Uchani, the deputy minister of small business, told The Associated Press.

But buying used clothing is a hard habit to break. On market days, poor and middle class Bolivians alike search the heaps of off-season department store lines and Christmas sweaters. Bolivia has an estimated 15,000 used clothing sellers, organized into unions. And while 6,000 of these have signed up for job training and loans under a $10 million government program, others have marched in opposition to the used-clothing ban.

Many countries face similar struggles, with high-quality used clothes glutting the market like never before.

A globalization-driven drop in clothing production costs has fed a ballooning market for new clothes in rich countries, and that means they are being cast off more quickly, said Pietra Rivoli, a Georgetown University business professor and author of "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy."

"It's a very circular trade," Rivoli said. "If China is producing cheaper T-shirts, then we in the U.S. are buying more T-shirts, and then we're disposing of more T-shirts."

Not all those shirts end up in poor countries. Canada and Japan are two of the world's largest used clothing importers, and trendy Tokyo shoppers will pay $100 for the right threadbare American tee.

But in the developing world, used clothing sells for rock-bottom prices that can cripple local textile industries. And economists doubt Bolivia and others countries trying to block the imports will be able to bolster native textile industries that now trail decades behind China and other manufacturing giants.

As much as 90 percent of the 55,000 tons of used clothing entering Bolivia each year is thought to come from the United States.

Direct U.S. imports are minimal - just 1,067 tons last year from the 610,100 tons the U.S. Department of Commerce says are annually sent abroad.

Instead, landlocked Bolivia relies on smugglers crossing over from Chile, the No. 3 importer of U.S. clothing.

The Bolivian Institute of Foreign Commerce estimates just 7 percent of used clothing enters Bolivia legally - raising doubts whether Morales can actually halt the trade. Legal and illegal imports make up an estimated $40 million business annually.

Street vendors get their wares from middlemen who buy from bulk importers. Some re-tailor choice pieces; others just slash open the bales and let customers forage at prices as low as 25 cents a T-shirt or 63 cents a sweater.

It's a slim profit margin, but all the sellers need is a tarp to lay the clothes on.

Critics say this bare-bones business devours about half of Bolivia's clothing market and forces Bolivian producers to keep costs down by using cheap imported Chinese cloth and turning out shirts and pants that are both more expensive and of lower quality than the U.S. castoffs.

Bolivians do have a proud history when it comes to clothes. The Inca were such avid weavers that they kept records in complicated systems of knotted ropes called quipus. Aymara women created their own signature look of fringed shawl, layered skirt and elegant bowler hat.

But today, Bolivia's handmade alpaca sweaters are too expensive for the locals and are sold mainly to tourists.

Shoppers crowding the El Alto market are torn between Morales' call to "dignity" and their need for affordable clothes.

With a monthly pay check under $200 and five teenage kids to clothe, policeman Jose Luis Hernandez said he digs through the used clothing out of necessity, not choice.

"I don't know what it's like to wear new clothing, because my pay isn't enough after the food, the rent," Hernandez said.

Copyright © 2007, The Associated Press