The petty thief who built the world's richest cartel — and left a country to count the cost.
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Here are the ten key words you'll meet. They come in four short tasks, each a different kind of puzzle. Do the thinking first, say your answer out loud, and only then reveal to check.
Read each situation aloud. From the situation alone, decide what the bold word means — then reveal.
Each definition describes one word; the first letter is given. Say the word aloud, then reveal to check it and an example.
Decide before you reveal.
Read the sentence, choose your answer, then reveal the letter and why.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born in 1949, near Medellín, in Colombia. His family was not the poorest in the country, but money was tight, and Escobar grew up hungry for far more than his surroundings could offer. Even as a teenager he was drawn to quick, illegal money. He used to run small schemes on the streets — reselling stolen goods, smuggling untaxed cigarettes, and, according to the stories that grew up around him, stealing gravestones to sand down and sell again.
By his twenties he had moved into more serious crime, including car theft and, some accounts say, kidnapping. But the opportunity that would make him one of the richest men alive was only just appearing. In the 1970s, demand for cocaine in the United States was rising fast, and Colombia sat in the perfect position to supply it. Escobar saw the scale of the profit before most of his rivals did, and he moved to control not just a share of the trade but the routes, the labs and the men who ran them.
Out of this grew the Medellín cartel — a network of traffickers who would come to move a large part of the cocaine reaching America. In the early days Escobar would fly small planes of product north himself; later, the operation grew so vast that he was said to lose enormous sums simply to damp and rats eating the stored cash. He was becoming, quite literally, one of the wealthiest criminals the world had ever seen.
1. What kinds of petty crime was Escobar involved in as a young man?
2. What change in the 1970s allowed him to become enormously rich?
1. Small street schemes — reselling stolen goods, smuggling untaxed cigarettes, and later car theft and other serious crime.
2. Rising demand for cocaine in the United States; Colombia was well placed to supply it, and Escobar moved to control the trade, building the Medellín cartel.
At the height of his power, Escobar was astonishingly rich — by some estimates a billionaire many times over. He built a private estate, Hacienda Nápoles, complete with its own zoo, and he cultivated an image as a friend of the poor. He would pay for housing, football pitches and floodlights in Medellín's poorest districts, and to some people there he was a benefactor. He even won a seat in Colombia's Congress for a time, hoping to turn his fortune into respectability and political power.
But that image sat on top of extraordinary violence. Escobar's method for dealing with judges, police, politicians and journalists became infamous under one phrase: "plata o plomo" — "silver or lead", meaning take the bribe or take the bullet. Those who could be bought were bought; those who could not be intimidated or bribed were, again and again, killed. When the Colombian government moved towards allowing traffickers to be extradited to the United States, Escobar turned his fortune into a war against the state.
The years that followed were among the darkest in Colombia's modern history. Car bombs, the assassination of officials, and attacks on public figures killed and wounded very large numbers of people — police officers, politicians, journalists and ordinary bystanders among them. This was not the quiet crime of the shadows; it was open, sustained warfare aimed at forcing the state to give in. Behind the wealth and the carefully built image of a man of the people lay a campaign of terror that scarred an entire country.
1. How did Escobar try to build a positive public image?
2. What did the phrase "plata o plomo" mean, and what did Escobar do when the state moved towards extradition?
1. He funded housing, football pitches and services in poor areas of Medellín, presenting himself as a benefactor, and even won a seat in Congress for a time.
2. "Silver or lead" — take a bribe or a bullet. When the state moved towards extradition to the US, he turned his fortune into a violent war against it, including bombings and assassinations.
By the early 1990s, the pressure on Escobar was closing in from every side. To avoid extradition, he struck an extraordinary deal with the Colombian government: he would surrender and serve time in a prison he himself had helped design and build. Known as "La Catedral", it was less a prison than a fortified compound, and from inside it Escobar continued to run his empire. When the authorities finally moved to transfer him to a real jail in 1992, he simply walked out and disappeared.
Now he was a fugitive, hunted by a special Colombian police unit with intelligence help from abroad and hounded by rival criminals who had turned against him. One by one, the people around him were captured or killed, and his network of protection fell apart. The man who used to move freely through Medellín as its untouchable king was reduced to hiding in ordinary houses, moving constantly, his options shrinking week by week.
On 2 December 1993, the day after his forty-fourth birthday, he was traced to a house in Medellín. In the gunfire that followed as security forces closed in, Pablo Escobar was killed on the rooftops he had been trying to flee across. His death ended one man's reign, but not the trade he had helped build, nor the wounds he left behind. Colombia spent years afterwards counting the cost — the tens of thousands dead across the era of cartel violence, and a society working to recover from what those years had done to it.
1. What was unusual about the prison Escobar agreed to enter, and how did his imprisonment end?
2. How did Escobar's life end, and what does the story say about the wider cost?
1. He helped design and build his own prison, "La Catedral", and kept running his empire from inside it; when the state tried to move him to a real jail in 1992, he escaped.
2. As a hunted fugitive, he was tracked to a house in Medellín and killed during a police operation on 2 December 1993. The wider cost was tens of thousands dead and a country left to recover.
Escobar's story is full of things that repeatedly happened in the past — the way he behaved, the schemes he ran, the way things once were. English has two neat tools for this: used to and would. Master them and you can paint a whole vanished world in a few sentences.
Write the correct form. If the verb is a state, only used to works; if it's a repeated action, either is fine — write used to / would.
1. As a teenager, Escobar resell stolen goods on the streets. (repeated action)
2. Hacienda Nápoles have its own private zoo. (a past state — "have")
3. In the early days, he fly the small planes north himself. (repeated action)
1. used to / would (a repeated action — both work)
2. used to (a state — "have"; "would have" is not used here)
3. used to / would (a repeated action — both work)
Each sentence has an error in the used to / would structure. Write the corrected words.
1. He (use) to run small schemes as a boy. (affirmative — spelling)
2. Medellín (would) be one of the world's most dangerous cities. (a state — wrong structure)
3. Escobar didn't (used) to be famous at first. (negative — spelling)
1. used (affirmative: "used to run")
2. used to (a state, so not "would"): "used to be"
3. use (after "didn't", no d: "didn't use to be")
Fill each gap with used to or would (choose used to where the verb is a state). Read it aloud once you're done.
In his early years Escobar resell stolen goods on the streets of Medellín. The city be far more dangerous than it is today. Every so often he pay for houses and football pitches, and to some people he seem like a friend of the poor.
used to / would resell (action) · used to be (state) · used to / would pay (action) · used to seem (state — "seem")
Notice: for the states ("be", "seem") only used to works; for the repeated actions ("resell", "pay") either is fine.
Hold on to these two — you'll need them in the Speak tab, where you'll describe how a person and a place repeatedly were, and how they changed.
You've read the story and you have the words — so now the real thing is within reach. There's a full podcast episode that tells this story in much greater depth, in natural, real-speed English. It's optional: the lesson stands on its own without it.
From the Noiser podcast network. Hosted by historians, roughly 50 minutes. Open the show on Spotify and search "Short History Of Pablo Escobar" to find the episode.
Open the podcast on Spotify →This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than escaping it.
Tell the story of Pablo Escobar in your own words, as if to someone who has never heard of him. Move through the arc: the young man drawn to petty crime in Medellín → the rise of the cocaine trade and the Medellín cartel → the enormous wealth and the carefully built image → "plata o plomo" and the war on the state → the deal, the escape, and the fall in 1993.
Paint how things repeatedly were: use used to and would at the right moments, and work in at least five key words (cartel, smuggling, magnate, bribe, corruption, extradition, ruthless, notorious, insurgency, abscond).
To some in Medellín, Escobar was a benefactor; to the country as a whole, he was the source of terrible violence. Should someone's charity ever soften how we judge the harm they cause? Build an argument, and be clear about where you would draw the line — and why the two sides of his reputation cannot simply cancel out.
Escobar's era is often used as a "before and after" for Medellín and Colombia. Describe how a place you know used to be and how it has changed — lean on the grammar: what people used to do, what a street or a town would look like, what it used to be famous for.
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: