What was going on when I was born?

Fidel Castro says Cuba will halt military aid to Nicaragua if an agreement is reached for all countries to stop sending arms and advisers to Central America. In response to Mr. Castro's remarks, which were broadcast on American television today, President Reagan said he was willing to give Mr. Castro ''the benefit of the doubt'' in any negotiations. But Administration officials stressed that the United States could not accept any agreement for withdrawal of foreign military forces from Central America unless the agreement was ''under fully verifiable and reciprocal conditions.'' Curb on Advisers and Arms Mr. Castro made his remarks Thursday night in an interview with reporters. Speaking through an interpreter, he said: ''If there were to be an agreement among all the parties involved about withdrawing all the advisers, we would be willing to support such a settlement. If an agreement were reached on the basis of the cessation of sending weapons to any state of Central America we would be willing to abide by it.''

The Treasury Department announced today that it would sell its rights to purchase 14.4 million shares of Chrysler Corporation stock - a sale likely to bring the Government a profit of at least $250 million, officials said. The rights, called warrants, were granted by Chrysler in 1980 in return for the risk the Government took in guaranteeing $1.2 billion in loans that the auto company needed to avoid bankruptcy. Had it chosen to buy the stock, the Treasury would have paid less than half the current market value. Lee A. Iacocca, Chrysler's chairman, denounced the Government's decision. It would involve selling the warrants to a Wall Street underwriter, who in turn would sell them in a public offering.

Racial and ethnic jokes have landed in force on the nation's bookshelves under the imprint of such major paperback publishers as Ballantine Books, Bantam Books and Pocket Books. But even as the once-taboo volumes have begun to scale the best-seller lists, social historians are deploring them as a reflection of declining standards. ''All these terribly tasteless, disgusting books and films represent a breakdown of decency and of standards of taste,'' said Barbara W. Tuchman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. Publishers, by contrast, think that critics are taking the books too seriously. ''We're not interested in making any grand statements about American culture, but the books seem to have struck a chord because they are selling, and we haven't gotten any letters of protest,'' said Sandy Bodner, a spokesman for Ballantine Books, publisher of two best-selling collections.

The Reagan Administration plans no reduction in secret aid for Nicaraguan rebels after the vote in the House of Representatives to cancel such aid, senior Administration officials said today. The House voted on Thursday night to cancel all covert aid to rebels fighting the Nicaraguan Government by Sept. 30. The bill, which was passed by a vote of 228-195, is not binding unless it is approved by the Senate and signed by President Reagan. Both actions are considered unlikely.

The State Board of Regents today approved a farreaching plan for curriculum and other changes designed to increase academic rigor in public and private schools throughout the state. Beginning as early as September 1984, New York's three million elementary, junior high and senior high school students would be required under the plan to take more courses in math, science, social studies and the arts. They would also be required to learn a foreign language, take more tests, do more homework and spend more time learning about computers beginning in elementary school. ''We are increasing our expectations about what students can achieve,'' said Gordon M. Ambach, the State Commissioner of Education. ''As a result, New York will have the highest academic standards of any state in the country.''

A seven-ship Navy group led by the battleship Iowa is to be based on Staten Island, Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. told an applauding crowd of New York City political and civic leaders yesterday. The action ended a year of political maneuvering by officials of three Atlantic ports. It will add $500 million a year to the New York metropolitan area's economy, Mr. Lehman said at a breakfast on the Intrepid, the retired aircraft carrier that is berthed in Manhattan. Standing on the flight deck of the Intrepid before a large American flag billowing in a Hudson River breeze, Mr. Lehman said the project would require 3,200 Navy personnel and provide 400 permanent jobs. Preparation of the site, in Stapleton, S.I., would create 2,000 construction jobs, he said, and 1,500 jobs would be needed for maintenance and repair.

Richard B. Stone, the United States special envoy, said today that Nicaragua should open talks with its opponents and ''fulfill the promises'' it made when the Sandinistas took power in 1979. Mr. Stone, on the ninth day of a visit to the region, also said United States ships now off Nicaragua may ''decrease the risks'' of fighting in Central America. He arrived in Colombia from San Jose, Costa Rica.

Provisional President Alvaro Magana said tonight that elections for a new president would not be held this year as planned because of delays over passage of a new Salvadoran constitution. ''I really never promised elections by the end of this year, I only hoped it would happen,'' Mr. Magana said at a reception for Salvadoran and foreign journalists. ''I don't see how elections can be held by the end of this year,'' he said. Mr. Magana had announced on March 6 that elections would be held this year and President Reagan, in his news conference on Tuesday, reiterated that El Salvador would have elections at Christmas.

They call it Beirutization or Lebanization here, and they don't want it. To Costa Ricans, Lebanization means the process by which a free, open and relatively prosperous country is turned by those who seek refuge there into a sectarian battleground like Lebanon. There are those who believe that all the ingredients for trouble are already present in this pleasant city. San Jose is home to Salvadorans of both left and right, to a variety of exiled Guatemalans, to Cubans, to anti-Sandinista Nicaraguans and, it is feared, to loyal Sandinistas trying to hunt their enemies down.

The Foreign Ministry claimed today that the United States Navy frigate Clifton Sprague was less than 15 miles off Nicaragua's Pacific coast in ''an attitude that is clearly provocative and offensive to the national sovereignty.'' A ministry statement also said an unidentified plane fired three rockets at El Cardon island Thursday night and fled in the direction of Honduras.

A tape recording of a purported telephone conversation between President Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that was circulated in Western Europe this spring was faked, possibly by the Soviet intelligence service, the State Department said today.

At least 33 people were killed today in a new outbreak of violence in the Sri Lankan capital, a Government spokesman said. Security forces shot and killed 15 looters and arrested 300 during the day, the spokesman, Douglas Liyanage, said on the Sri Lankan radio. Fifteen other people died when they were attacked by angry crowds, Mr. Liyanage said. In a separate incident an army patrol shot and killed two people after a homemade bomb was thrown at the soldiers from a rooftop, the Government said. One soldier died when he shot himself accidentally.