Gabriel Elizondo

Gabriel Elizondo's picture
Gabriel Elizondo
Correspondent | Brazil
Biography

Gabriel Elizondo, based in Sao Paulo, has over 13 years of journalism experience, starting his career as a newspaper journalist before migrating to television and the web.

He has produced several long-form documentaries from Latin America for Al Jazeera and has reported hard news and features from virtually every corner of Brazil. He often writes, films and edits on-location and also writes for the web. He holds a bachelor's degree in international security and conflict resolution, and a master's degree in global finance and trade.

Latest posts by Gabriel Elizondo

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on March 29th, 2012
Photo by Reuters

Oliver Stuenkel was part of Brazil’s delegation to the Track II academic forum in preparation for the New Delhi Summit for the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) which was held on Thursday.

Stuenkel specialises in Brazil's relations with India, but also more broadly focuses his research on the BRICS. He is currently a professor of international relations at Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo. He also runs a blog called Post Western World, which looks at how emerging powers are changing the world.

Below is part of my interview with Stuenkel, where he sheds light on Brazil and the prospects and challenges the BRICS face.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on January 17th, 2012

The Saint-Fluer family is living in a bathroom in a once abandoned hotel in the dusty Amazon border town of Brasileia, Brazil.

There is dad Wesley, his wife Angeline, and their five-month-old baby, Isaac.

The bathroom is about the size of a closet.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on January 11th, 2012

In the northwest Brazilian Amazon town of Brasileia, population 20,238, there are almost 1,200 Haitians.

They often mill around during the day, clustered in groups in the shade trying to keep cool from the steamy heat, waiting for weeks for their work documents to be processed so they can get a job in another part of Brazil.

But on Tuesday it was the two other guys sitting alone who caught my attention. They could have been Bolivian perhaps, or even Brazilian. But I knew they weren’t.

“We are from Bangladesh,” AHM Sultan Ahmed, 36, tells me with a smile when I approach and ask to talk with them.

His friend, Abdul Awal, and my photojournalist, Maria Elena Romero, and I, all sit together on the grass and begin to chat.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on January 2nd, 2012
Hi, old friend! Obama and Rousseff in Brasilia in March. [Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR]

In one of her last official appearances of 2011, on December 22, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, arrived in a sweltering gymnasium in downtown Sao Paulo to give a speech to a few hundred working-class social activists.

In her speech, she mentioned “Lula” more than 10 times.

At one point the audience briefly broke into chants of “Lula, Lula, Lula!”

Lula wasn’t even present.

“Lula” is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the wildly popular and charismatic former president of this country.

This is the man who in 2009 told a ballroom of CEOs at a regional World Economic Forum meeting in Rio de Janeiro he was going to scrap the speech his advisors had prepared and instead gave a blistering and empassioned critique of how the rich, developed nations were resonsible for the global economic mess and it was poor all over the world paying the price.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on December 23rd, 2011
[Reuters]

Long before Kim Jong-un was chosen as the heir to North Korea’s dynasty, he was apparently just another eight year old kid who wanted to go see Mickey Mouse at Disneyland Tokyo.

So his parents reportedly took the logical next step anybody in the same situation would: They got him a fake Brazilian passport.

Well, maybe that’s not the obvious next step for most parents, but that is what happened, according to a report in Japan’s widely-read Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, with a print circulation of almost 20 million. 

The article is based on information from Japanese security officials who claim that Jong-un secretly entered Japan with his brother (who was also reportedly using a Brazilian passport).

The kids were a

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on December 18th, 2011
This tear gas cannister was reportedly used on Bahrain's pro democracy activists.

On Sunday the New York Times ran a column by Nicholas Kristof titled: “Repressing Democracy, with American Arms.”

The column examines the United States’ millions of dollars in arms sales to Bahrain, a country in the midst of a 10-month government crackdown against pro-democracy protestors that has reportedly left at least 35 dead.

Down south, here in Brazil, a similar discussion – albeit on a much smaller scale - is taking place after photos surfaced on the internet allegedly showing tear gas manufactured in Brazil used against the activists.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on November 25th, 2011
Photo: Reuters

Ildo Luis Sauer spent five years as the Director of Gas and Energy for Brazilian energy giant Petrobras. He left the company in 2007, and now is the director of the postgraduate programme in energy at the University of Sao Paulo’s Institute of Energy.  Sauer travels the world giving lectures on energy policy, and remains one of Brazil’s top independent consultants on the matter.

With Chevron coming under increased scrutiny for the oil spill off the coast of Brazil more than two weeks ago, Sauer sat down with Al Jazeera to discuss the whole matter. 

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on November 16th, 2011
Lula shaves his iconic beard.

I was once at a dinner party in the United States not too long ago, when a guest asked me a simple, straight-forward question: “Is that guy with the beard still the president down there in Brazil?”

The guy with the beard.

I chucked, and answered, no, the bearded guy is no longer president. It’s now a woman. The guest, who admitted to not following Brazil news that closely, gave me a quizzical look and then I think the conversation quickly moved on to the weather or something like that.  

File 52286

Lula da Silva and his famous beard when he was president of Brazil [Getty] 

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on October 18th, 2011

They are marching on.

More than 1,500 indigenous Bolivians in the final days of a remarkable 500km march across the country.

Final destination: The seat of the national government - La Paz.

Their message to Bolivian President Evo Morales: Stop the building of a controversial highway that would cut through their indigenous land.

A good overview of the Bolivian road project by Carwil Bjork-James can be found here. 

File 49866

The marchers are less than 40km from La Paz [Photo: Gabriel Elizondo] 
 
They are more than 60 days into this march.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on October 11th, 2011
The Massachusetts statesman's presidential ambitions include a plan for his Latin neighbours.

If Mitt Romney becomes president of the United States, he apparently has big plans for Latin America. 

“Neither the Bush administration or the Obama administration really focused on Latin America,” a Romney aide apparently told a conference call of reporters late last week, according to this article in Politico. 

The article quoted an aide who said President Mitt Romney would envision “larger campaigns for economic opportunity in Latin America” and that Latin America would be one of the main regions in the world Romney foreign policy would differ from George Bush or Barack Obama. 

Fair enough.

With that in mind I took great interest when on Friday Romney released his 44-page foreign policy white paper titled: “An American Century - A Strategy to Secure

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Biography

Gabriel Elizondo's picture
Gabriel Elizondo
Correspondent
Gabriel Elizondo has been reporting from Brazil for over three years both for television and the web.

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