He also began a project of the vocabulary and speech of his region's Spanish, which would eventually become the book Lexicon del Noreste.
[4][6] Later in life, he would earn a masters in humanities from Universidad de Monterrey and a doctorate in history from the Iberoamericana University.
[1][4] Elizondo retired from his administrative career, but wrote until his death of cancer, which he battled unsuccessfully for two years.
He presented some of his short stories to the writer, who had a reputation for supporting young talent, who pronounced Elizondo's work “pure silver.”[3] Elizondo wrote for the El Norte and El Porvenir newspapers, wrote biographies of José Vasconcelos and Martín Luis Guzmán along with histories of businesses and institutions.
[1][2] Elizondo's style was costumbrista,[8] chronicling life and change in the towns and cities of his border region.
[5][6] He was one of five authors in the 1980s particularly noted for writing about desert life in northern Mexico, which was named “narrativo del desierto” (desert narrative), along with Daniel Sada of Baja California, Gerardo Cornejo of Sonora, Jesus Gardea of Chihuahua and Serverino Salazar of Zacatecas.
[2][9] Setenta veces siete won the Premio Colima from the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1987.
His photographic work made its way into books such as Monterrey, una vision fotográfica, Regiomontanos 1900 and Polvo de aquellos lodos.