CASCOS BARES HIS SOUL AT OLIVEIRA JUNIOR HONOR SOCIETY INDUCTION CEREMONY

By Juan Montoya
In the forty or so years that I have known Carlos Cascos, his speech last night at the Oliveira Middle School National Junior Honor Society induction ceremony had to be the best last speech i have ever heard him deliver.
No, it wasn't a call to arms as he was apt to give when he was fighting for his political life when votes went missing in his race with Democrat standard bearer John Wood.
And it wasn't a plaintive appeal to his fellow commissioner in the first year of the 12 he served as county commissioner for Pct. 2 when Mike Cortinas transferred all of the road material budget item to San Benito's Adolph Thomae and left Cascos with an empty caliche bin at the warehouse at the 14th Street county barn.
It wasn't a rousing one either as when he became the second Republican to occupy the county judge's seat after defeating Democrat honcho Gilberto Hinojosa in a no-holds barred contest still memorable in the political talk at the county coffee shop.
In an era when we have two Republican congressional candidates with roots in Mexico (Adela Garza and Jessica P. Bradshaw) and at least one of the handful of Justice of the Peace (2-2) candidates (Yolanda Begum) also hailing from our neighboring country, it was heartening to see first-hand that the American Dream is still very much alive and manifesting itself in the likes of the Cameron County Judge.
In his remarks, Cascos told the 30 young inductees to the NJHS inductees of a young man born in Matamoros from parents from Mexico City and San Fernando who entered out local public schools (Los Ebanos, aka Sharp Elementary) in the anti-Mexican era when even speaking Spanish was agaisnt the rules.
"That young man was me. There was no National Honor Society when I was growing up," he told them. "In fact, even admitting that you were from Matamoros was looked down upon back then."
Nonetheless, he outlined his ascent though academia and on to Brownsville High School, Texas Southmost College, then on to get his accounting degree at the University of Texas. Today, he is a certified public accountant, is a diplomat in the Academy of Certified Public Accountants and is certified as a forensic auditor.
After a short stint with the Department of Public Safety, he joined a nationally-known accounting firm with offices in Brownsville.
"I remember when I went to see the counselor at Brownsville High School and she told me that college wasn't for me, that i should look for a trade," he said. "And I wasn't the only one they told this to. But we're stubborn sometimes."
"We didn't have things like financial aid back then," he told them. "But we knew what we wanted."
He also reminded the inductees and guests that technology had speeded up the transfer of knowledge so that each new generation possess an exponential increase of know how not available to previous generations.
"When your parents were growing up there was no such thing as a cell phone, or iPods or iPads," he said. "Nowadays a three-year-old can figure out how to program a remote faster than I could."
However, he cautioned the young scholars that because they are now part of an elite group of students nationally, they also inherited a responsibility to be role models for other students because anything they did would reflect on their membership in the organization.
"With great power comes great responsibility," he said. "You are going to be a role model for someone."
Then, in his closing statements, he brought back the students to the ground.
"Never think that you know more than your parent," he siad. "You might think that you're getting away with it, but sooner or later you'll get caught. Your parents have been there and can see what you're doing. You are book smart, but you are not street smart."