What was going on when I was born?

President Reagan certified to Congress today that despite ''great obstacles'' El Salvador was not only making progress on human rights but was also laying the foundation for democratic government. Such a certification on progress in human, political and economic rights in El Salvador is required every six months as a condition for continuing military aid to that country. At stake is $25 million in military aid Congress has approved for this fiscal year, but the Administration may seek an increase later this year, officials said. The 67-page report sent to Congress this afternoon ''describes the beginning of a process of building democratic structures and principles,'' the report said.

The Consumer Price Index, pulled down by lower interest rates on home mortgages, dropped by three-tenths of 1 percent in December, the Labor Department reported today. The decline brought the inflation rate for all of last year to 3.9 percent, a full percentage point less than most economists had predicted. It was the lowest increase since the 3.4 percent of 1972, when wage and price controls were in effect, and far below the double-digit rates of 1979 and 1980. The index rose 8.9 percent in 1981.

The Justice Department charged today that the Chicago suburb of Cicero excluded blacks from living there or working in town government jobs. In a suit filed in Federal District Court in Chicago, the department said: ''Through its officials, the Town of Cicero has verbally and physically harassed blacks attempting to migrate to Cicero, including overt actions to physically remove such blacks from the town.'' Justice Department officials declined to elaborate except to say that on occasions officials had physically ejected blacks from the town. The suit also charged that the town had been eligible for substantial Federal funds through a Community Development Block Grant Program designed to provide desegregated housing but had refused to participate in the program in order to deny housing to blacks.

Paul H. Nitze, the chief American negotiator at the talks on medium-range missiles in Europe, hinted strongly today after a meeting with President Reagan that the United States would show flexibility if the Soviet Union demonstrated some new ''give'' in its proposals. Although both Mr. Reagan and Mr. Nitze defended the so-called zero option proposed by the United States in November 1981 as the best way to handle the European missile question, Mr. Nitze, in response to reporters' questions, seemed to suggest that Washington might drop the zero option in response to some undefined concessions by Moscow. In his zero option proposal, Mr. Reagan offered to forgo deployment of 572 new American missiles in Europe in return for Moscow's dismantling of all 600 of its existing medium-range missiles. The Soviet Union has offered to cut the size of its missile force aimed at Western Europe to 162, the same number of missiles deployed by the French and British, if the United States does not deploy the cruise and Pershing 2 missiles.

The Salvation Army soup truck was about 10 minutes late the other night and the little crowd, a quorum of misery, waited, silent as the river below: hardly a word, barely a complaint, down and out on the Quai d'Austerlitz, between the railway station and the Seine, waiting for a little delivery truck and a plastic bowl of vegetable soup. There were 16 men at the curb when the truck pulled in. There were a couple of winos, overcoats shellacked in filth, and there were a couple of drug addicts, with defused eyes and faces blank as robots. There was a student type who seemed to be taking an investigative semester in the lower depths, and then there were eight or nine men in their 20's and 30's, who said they had been hunting for work and found none, who were hungry and who stood around very quietly looking for the soup truck that comes about 8:30 P.M. The truck, a throwback to the 1930's, when the Salvation Army dragged a soup wagon through the streets of Paris for its destitute, was put back into service in December for the first time in five decades. Soon afterward, a dormitory for homeless men was opened next to a bus parking lot at the edge of the city, and two more will follow it soon.

The Reagan Administration issued proposed regulations today for denying Federal education loans to male students who refuse to register for the military draft. The regulations, which would go into effect July 1, would affect about two million college and university men. The regulations carry out legislation passed by Congress last summer. ''The United States Government is saying bluntly that taxpayer funds will not be used to provide a college education for students who do not comply with the Selective Service registration requirements,'' said T.H. Bell, Secretary of Education.

Edwin P. Wilson, a former American intelligence agent convicted last year of smuggling weapons to Libya, recently tried to have two Federal prosecutors and five Government witnesses killed, according to Federal law enforcement officials. The plot was blocked by the Government last week, the officials said, after an undercover agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was posing as a collaborator, received a $10,000 down payment and a list of targets provided by Mr. Wilson. The Federal officials said Mr. Wilson, who has been in custody since his capture in New York last June, made arrangements for the killings from a New York jail in unmonitored phone calls that he was permitted to make. They said Mr. Wilson's son delivered the down payment and list to the F.B.I. agent.

The ship that collided with the Andrea Doria in 1956 was involved in a collision with a West German submarine before dawn today. There were no injuries, and both vessels continued under their own power.

Italian police today arrested two men and a woman, all Italians, wanted in a $15 million bank robbery in Spain's Costa del Sol. The police identified the three as Stefano Sbordoni, 26 years old; Giorgio De William Pinca, 23, and Silvana Zito, 35.

The land redistribution program is mired in debt and is caught between two political forces, one of which would like to see it succeed and another that has tried to undermine its success, according to Government and labor officials here. The Reagan Administration, for which the program has epitomized social progress in El Salvador, must certify progress in land redistribution to continue sending military aid to the country. In addition, the success of the program is seen by moderates here as a crucial element in the country's effort to succeed as a democracy and win the civil war against the leftist opposition. While more than 80,000 peasants theoretically control land that was not theirs three years ago when the program began, they are struggling to hold onto their property through waves of evictions and vandalism. Moreover, the administrators of one of the two major agencies that manage a farm program are ''inefficient and incompetent,'' according to a high Government official.

Vice President Paulo Muwanga has accused two opposition Members of Parliament and a Roman Catholic priest of collaborating with anti-Government guerrillas, the Ugandan radio said today.

Hans-Jochen Vogel, the opposition Social Democratic candidate for Chancellor, said today that the United States should make a constructive counteroffer to the latest Soviet proposal to reduce medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. ''We would welcome the impression that the United States was ready to reply with a constructive counterproposal,'' Mr. Vogel told a party gathering in Dortmund. ''We would not only welcome it. We demand it.''