A scholarship from the Instituto Mexico-Norteamericano of Guadalajara enabled him to continue his education at the Juilliard School in New York, where he studied violin with Ivan Galamian, chamber music with Louis Persinger, and composition with Peter Mennin and Stefan Wolpe, from whom he learned about serial techniques.
By the end of 1958 he traveled to Mexico City became a violinist and assistant director of chorus of Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México.
[citation needed] Enríquez's early works, starting with the Suite for Violin and Piano in 1949 through the First String Quartet (1959) were in the nationalist neoclassism widespread in Mexico at that time, featuring folk-like tunes in dissonant harmonies and with propulsive rhythms including frequent syncopation and hemiola.
In later works, such as Transición for orchestra (1965), the Second String Quartet and Ambivalencia for violin and cello (both 1967), and Díptico I for flute and piano (1969) he began to experiment with aleatory procedures and graphic notation.
Aleatory, contrapuntal, and soloistic passages alternating with long timbral blocks are characteristic of his music though the 1960s and 70s, while his last works returned to strong, lyrical melodies, as in the Fourth String Quartet (1983), and finally to a recasting of his earlier nationalist style within freer, contrasting structures, as in his Fifth String Quartet (1988) (Saavedra 2001).