Escobar was born in Rionegro in Antioquia, Colombia. He was the third of seven children to Abel de Jesus Escobar and Hemilda Gaviria. His father was a farmer and his mother an elementary school teacher. Escobar and his family lived in an adobe hut. They had no electricity and no running water. Pablo Escobar and his brother's school once sent them home because they had no shoes and no money to buy them. Pablo Escobar studied political science at a university nearby. He had to stop studying because he could not pay the fees. This was when he began his criminal career. He started to steal gravestones and removed the words from them to resell them. His brother, Roberto Escobar, said that this was not the truth. He said that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care. Escobar then studied for a short time at the University of Antioquia.