From a very young age, Pablo Antinori remembers moving back and forth between Bolivia and Argentina, helping his parents run their restaurants. “Helping, eating, and drinking all the Coca-Cola I could,” he jokes. When he was 18, the co-founder of Dallas-based Soccorro Tequila joined his mother in Ohio, where she had moved for a better life. He began learning English and working nights at a Target Supercenter before landing in Dallas and eventually managing several restaurants, including Pakpao and El Bolero in the Design District. In 2015, Southern Glazer’s recruited him to work in multicultural trade development. Five years later, he launched Socorro Tequila with co-founder Josh Irving. Here, he shares more about some hoops he had to jump through to get to America.
“For me to leave from Bolivia to the U.S., I needed a Bolivian stamp that showed I entered Bolivia in the last 30 days. Because I had been there for two years, I didn’t have that stamp. So, I took an 18-hour bus trip from Santa Cruz to the border with $20 in my pocket to convince the Bolivian Border Patrol to give me a new stamp. I went in there and explained, ‘This is my situation.’ I then said, ‘I can buy you some empanadas.’ The guards said, ‘Let’s wait for the captain. Come back in two hours.’ I came back, and they said, ‘Yeah, we will do it.’ So, I went with my 20 bucks, bought some empanadas for the guys in there, and then they sent me out with the right stamp. I went back, waited another 10 hours for my bus, and went home.”
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