When you think of Pablo Escobar, you probably picture the private zoo, the massive piles of cash buried in the Colombian countryside, or the terrifying violence that gripped Medellín in the 1980s. You don't usually picture a kid sitting in a wooden desk trying to figure out algebra. But he was there. People often wonder did Pablo Escobar go to school or was he just a street-smart kid who climbed the ranks of the underworld through pure grit?
Honestly, the answer isn't a simple "yes" or "no." It's more of a "yes, but he hated every second of being told what to do."
Escobar wasn't some uneducated thug who stumbled into a fortune. He came from a solid, middle-class background. His mother, Hermilda Gaviria, was actually an elementary school teacher. Think about that for a second. The woman who raised the most dangerous man in the world spent her days teaching children how to read and write. She valued education deeply and pushed Pablo to succeed in the classroom. He attended local schools in Envigado, a suburb of Medellín. He wasn't a genius, but he wasn't a failure either. He was just... calculating.
The early years in Envigado
He went to the Lucrecio Jaramillo Vélez high school. This wasn't some prestigious academy for the elite, but it wasn't a slum school either. It was a standard public institution where the sons of workers and teachers went to get a basic education. Pablo was smart. Everyone who knew him back then says he had a sharp mind, especially when it came to numbers and social dynamics. He knew how to talk to people. He knew how to lead.
But school bored him.
He didn't want to learn about history; he wanted to make it. Or at least, he wanted to own it. While his classmates were worrying about exams, Pablo was already running small-time scams. There’s a famous (though often debated) story that he used to steal headstones from graveyards, sand them down, and resell them to grieving families. Some biographers, like his brother Roberto Escobar, claim this is a myth and that they actually dealt in stolen cars and contraband electronics. Either way, the "classroom" for Pablo was quickly moving from the schoolhouse to the streets of Medellín.
Did Pablo Escobar go to school for higher education?
This is where things get interesting. Most people assume he dropped out of high school to become a bandit. That’s not quite right. Escobar actually graduated from high school. He even tried his hand at university. He enrolled at the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana in Medellín.
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He wanted to be a lawyer. Or a politician.
Imagine a world where Pablo Escobar finished his degree. He might have been a corrupt senator or a high-powered defense attorney instead of a narco-terrorist. But the university life didn't stick. He stayed for maybe a term or two before dropping out. He realized that the "legitimate" path to power was too slow. It required patience. It required following rules written by men he didn't respect.
He looked at the poverty around him and the slow grind of the Colombian bureaucracy and decided he could do it better, faster, and much more violently. By the time he was in his early 20s, the question of did Pablo Escobar go to school was irrelevant because he was already teaching himself the mechanics of the black market.
The influence of a teacher mother
You can't talk about his education without talking about Hermilda. She was his biggest supporter and, in many ways, his most dangerous enabler. Because she was a teacher, she gave him a sense of intellectual superiority. She told him he was special. She told him he could achieve anything.
When he started bringing home money that clearly didn't come from a part-time job, she didn't grill him about his "homework." She accepted it. This created a weird duality in Pablo. He remained a "student" of the world, constantly reading newspapers and staying informed about politics, yet he held a total disdain for formal institutions. He used his literacy and his basic grasp of law—learned during those few months at university—to manipulate the system later in life.
Learning on the job
If the classroom failed him, the street was a master professor. Escobar’s real education came from a man named Alvaro Prieto, a contraband smuggler who took Pablo under his wing. This was his "grad school." He learned logistics. He learned how to bribe a police officer without getting shot. He learned that in Colombia, you either had plata (silver) or you took plomo (lead).
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He applied a very disciplined, almost academic approach to the drug trade. He kept meticulous records. He understood the supply chain better than most Fortune 500 CEOs of the era. If you look at the structure of the Medellín Cartel, it wasn't just a gang; it was a highly organized corporate entity. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because Pablo took the basic principles of organization he learned in school and applied them to the cocaine trade.
Why his lack of a degree mattered
Throughout his life, Pablo had a massive chip on his shoulder regarding the Colombian elite. These were men who had gone to the best schools in Bogotá and Europe. They looked down on him as an uncultured "paisa" from the sticks.
This is why he was so obsessed with being a politician.
In 1982, he was elected as a substitute member of the Chamber of Representatives. He wanted that "Dr. Escobar" title. He wanted the respect that comes with a degree and a suit. But when Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the Minister of Justice, publicly outed him as a drug trafficker on the floor of Congress, it wasn't just a legal blow—it was a social one. The "educated" elite had rejected him.
That rejection turned his focus from trying to join the system to trying to burn it down. He went from a guy who tried to go to university to a guy who blew up the Palace of Justice.
Was he actually "smart"?
There's a difference between being educated and being intelligent. Pablo was undeniably brilliant in a dark, pragmatic way. He spoke well. If you watch old interviews, he doesn't sound like a common criminal. He sounds like a populist leader. He used a vocabulary that reflected his middle-class upbringing and his mother’s influence.
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He read. He encouraged his kids to read. His son, Sebastián Marroquín (born Juan Pablo Escobar), often talks about how his father insisted on good manners and a certain level of intellectual curiosity at home, even while he was ordering hits on dozens of people outside. It's a bizarre contradiction that defines the "Escobar" brand of villainy.
Comparing him to other cartel leaders
If you look at his contemporaries, like the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers of the Cali Cartel, the education gap is clear. The Cali guys were known as "The Gentlemen of Cali." They actually had legitimate business backgrounds and tried to blend into the upper class.
Pablo never could.
He was always the kid who dropped out. He was the guy who bought his way into rooms where he wasn't wanted. His "schooling" was enough to make him dangerous, but not enough to make him accepted.
Practical takeaways from the life of Escobar
While we certainly shouldn't be looking to Pablo Escobar as a role model, there are historical lessons to be gleaned from how his education—or lack thereof—shaped the 20th century.
- Social mobility frustrations: Escobar’s story is a textbook example of what happens when someone with high intelligence and high ambition feels blocked by a rigid class system.
- The power of a "mentor": Without Alvaro Prieto, Escobar might have just been a failed law student. The people you "apprentice" under often matter more than the name on your diploma.
- The myth of the "uneducated" criminal: Most high-level organized crime isn't run by people who can't read. It’s run by people who understand systems well enough to break them.
If you’re researching this for a history project or just out of a morbid curiosity sparked by Narcos, the most important thing to remember is that Escobar was a product of a specific time and place. Colombia in the 1960s and 70s was a country where a degree didn't guarantee a job, but a gun often guaranteed a living.
To truly understand his impact, you should look into the history of the "La Violencia" period in Colombia, which set the stage for the chaos Pablo eventually mastered. You might also want to read "News of a Kidnapping" by Gabriel García Márquez. It gives a harrowing, deeply researched look at how Escobar used his "street education" to hold an entire nation hostage.
Stop looking at him as a cartoon character. He was a man who had the tools to be a productive member of society—he had the school, he had the books, he had the mother who taught—but he chose to use those tools to build a graveyard.
Next steps for deeper research
- Read "The Memory of Pablo Escobar": This book by his sister provides a much more intimate look at their childhood and school years than the sensationalist documentaries.
- Research the "Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana": See the environment he walked away from to understand the contrast between his potential life and his actual one.
- Compare the Medellín and Cali Cartels: Look at how the educational backgrounds of the leaders influenced their different "corporate" styles of smuggling.