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Por más que usábamos el pesticida, la plaga no desaparecía.

Por más que usábamos el pesticida, la plaga no desaparecía.
No matter how much we used the pesticide, the pest wouldn't disappear.
From Lesson 317:No matter how much (por más que, por mucho que)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Por más que usábamos el pesticida, la plaga no desaparecía.

Why does this sentence use the indicative usábamos instead of the subjunctive after por más que?
We use the indicative after por más que (no matter how much) when we are declaring a known, experienced fact. The speakers actually did use the pesticide in the past, so it's a factual statement. If they were talking about a hypothetical scenario (like "no matter how much we might use tomorrow"), they would use the subjunctive.
Wait, why is it el pesticida if it ends in "-a"?
Words ending in the suffix -cida (which means "killer", like pesticide, herbicide, or homicide) are masculine. Because of this rule, it is el pesticida despite the "-a" ending.
The English translation says "wouldn't disappear", which sounds conditional. Why is desaparecía in the imperfect tense?
In English, we often use "would" to describe things that consistently happened (or stubbornly refused to happen) in the past. In Spanish, this kind of ongoing or repeated past situation is expressed with the imperfect tense (desaparecía), not the conditional (desaparecería).
Could I use por mucho que instead of por más que in this sentence?
Yes, absolutely! Por mucho que usábamos and por más que usábamos mean the exact same thing here ("no matter how much we used") and are completely interchangeable.

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