by: Mike Baños - August 28, 1996

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY - Antonio Enriquez, two-time winner of the Palanca Grand Prize for the Novel, is this year's Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas Awardee for Fiction in English. The Award is given out by the Unyon ng Mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL, or the Writers Union of the Philippines).

          Mike L. Bigornia, UMPIL chairman, said the award is a recognition of Mr. Enriquez's outstanding achievement in Philippine Literature. The awarding ceremonies will be held on August 31, 1996 at the Goethe Institute, Aurora Blvd., Quezon City.

          Thirty one years after his first short story was published by the defunct Philippine Herald, Mr. Enriquez again won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Grand Prize for Literature for his third novel, Subanons, in 1993. He first won the Grand Prize in 1982 for his first novel, Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh. He also won in First Prize in the Short Story Category for his Spots on their Wings in 1973 and Third Prize for the same category for The Icon in 1969. The Palanca Award is considered the Philippines most prestigious award for literature.

          Antonio Reyes Enriquez was born in Zamboanga City, the setting for many of his short stories and novels. Despite the formidable talent which made him besides the illustrious Quijano de Manila the only Filipino writer to be selected for inclusion in the Asian and Pacific Writings Series of the University of Queensland Press in Australia, he was never much of a journalist. The only time he dabbled with the press was during the early 1960s when he was invited to join Proc Montesino's Mindanao Life magazine with Tony Elias of the Philippine Free Press. He confesses that when he was commissioned in 1993 by Time Magazine to do a feature on Zamboanga City for its Village Series (published in its August 16, 1993 issue), it took him much more effort to do than say, a short story on the same subject would have. Thus, he prefers to do creative writing, mostly in the short story genre, although lately he has been concentrating more on the novel.

          The shift from the short story to the novel was brought about mainly by necessity. "During the martial law days, there was no outlet to publish my short stories due to the strict censorship and curtailment of press freedom by the Marcos regime," he recalls. It was during the reign of the conjugal dictatorship that he took a two-year leave from his job as Assistant Regional Director for the Department of Public Information in Zamboanga City to finish “Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh,” and the rest is history. Mr. Enriquez adds that his recent inclination for the novel was a graduation  to a higher creative plane which allowed him greater room for expression than the short story.

          "Actually I finished a second novel before Subanons, which however, was published later by Giraffe Publishers." “The Living and the Dead” chronicles the decline of an aristocratic dynasty in Zamboanga when faced with the onslaught of uncouth immigrants from Luzon and the Visayas.

          "It just so happened that my manuscript for “The Living and the Dead” was already with Giraffe when organizers of the Palanca Grand Prize Award (which is now awarded only every three years instead of every year) started accepting entries for the 1993 competitions. Since I had just finished “Subanons,” my wife Joy entered it and happily, it won the Grand Prize." Mr. Enriquez credits his wife for entering all his winning entries to the Palanca Awards (with the exception of The Icon) and professes no real urge to enter such competitions himself.

          What has Antonio Enriquez, the novelist, been doing lately? "I've been working on a historical novel about the late Gen. Vicente Alvarez, the only revolutionary leader in Zamboanga recognized by the Katipunan who led the Zamboangueños against the Spaniards and later the Americans." However, the manuscript for the introductory material alone has already exceeded 400 pages so he has instead decided to complete it as a complementary book to the novel. Although he has the option of doing a historical fiction based on the general's exploits, he prefers to do a factual account which would be written through the eyes of a novelist instead of the usual historical standpoint. "It will be my legacy to the people of Zamboanga City."

          The exotic locales and unforgettable characters in many of the tales of Antonio Enriquez are drawn from the colorful mosaic of his checkered past. "There was a time when I did nothing but hunt and fish for two years in the old Basilan City during the time when my father Isidro was the City Auditor." His favorite indulgence during that period was deep sea fishing with Samal fishermen in the Sulu Sea. Fishing the Samal way with only hook, line and bare hands, he once caught a shark that was even bigger than the seven-man pumpboat they were riding on. "The Samal fisherman who owned the boat pleaded with me to cut the shark loose but I refused." In an epic battle reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the great fish towed them around in circles for hours (it was too big to be landed on the pumpboat) until it managed to shake free, much to the relief of his petrified companion.

          Like Alberto Gonzales, the hero of his first novel, Antonio Enriquez was once a party chief of a survey team of the El Certeza Surveying Co. doing triangulation towers for a watershed project in Pikit, Cotabato during the early 60s. During those times, Mindanao was still a wild, unexplored frontier and Mr. Enriquez recalls encounters with Maguindanaos, Maranaos, and even small, curly haired aborigines armed with only spears and arrows who neither looked left nor right whom they once chanced upon in  the deep marshland.

          Although he now lives quietly in Cagayan de Oro City where he looks after his Casa Hidalgo Lodging House along Tiano Bros. and Del Pilar Streets with his wife, daughter and grandchildren, he still takes down his escopeta (air rifle) occasionally and motorbikes into the wilds of nearby Bukidnon to pester game fowl with his perdigones (birdshot).

          Meantime a new novel of the South is in the works. Could this be the best that's yet to come? Only time will tell, and like grape wine mellowing in their oaken casks, we are willing to wait until the time is ripe to let the vintage Antonio Enriquez pour.