What was going on when I was born?

WHEN Mexico's new Government slashed public spending and reduced real wages last year, it won accolades from Western bankers eager to believe that austerity was the answer to Latin America's debt crisis. Today, that confidence has been shaken. The austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the big American and European banks have helped to thrust both Mexico and Brazil into recessions that are eroding their capacity to meet future debt obligations. And the newly-elected Governments of Argentina and Venezuela seem determined not to pay a similar price to appease their creditors. So a new Latin debt crisis is brewing, probably more perilous and certainly more political than in the recent past. This time the issue is whether Latin America's four biggest debtor nations can achieve economic recovery and political stability while continuing to make huge interest payments on their foreign debt.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz has warned Congress that passage of a bill to move the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could provoke a wave of anti-American violence throughout the Islamic world. Legislation requiring such a move has been introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, and has 34 Senate co-sponsors. A similar bill, introduced in the House by Representatives Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, and Benjamin A. Gilman, Republican of Middletown, N.Y., has 180 co-sponsors. A Moynihan aide said that the bill, which has received very little publicity, had been picking up support week by week as more members of Congress became co- sponsors.

The 31 children in Alvenia P. Hunter's second-grade class at the Pratt Elementary School in Birmingham, Ala., began the school day Thursday as they do every day, by bowing their heads for prayer. In unison, they recited: ''O, help me please each day to find new ways of just being kind. At home, at work, at school and play, please help me now and every day. Amen.'' Mrs. Hunter's class is one of many across the nation where, despite the Supreme Court's prohibition of organized prayer in the schools more than 20 years ago, students continue to recite prayers, sing hymns or read the Bible aloud. Many more students observe a period of silence in which they can pray if they want, a practice the Supreme Court has neither upheld nor rejected.

They had come so close. But after a frantic final few seconds of regulation in which they failed to get the ball into the hands of their gem, the freshman Dwayne (Pearl) Washington, for what could have been a winning shot, the Orangemen of Syracuse lost in overtime to Georgetown, 82-71, in the championship game of the Big East tournament last night at Madison Square Garden. With the victory, the Hoyas raised their record to 29-3 and became the first team in the five-year history of the conference to win both the regular-season and conference titles in the same season. Georgetown, the No. 2- ranked team in the nation last week, could be No. 1 this week following North Carolina's upset loss to Duke.

ATLANTA F OR months, Walter F. Mondale played peacemaker on the campaign trail, warning his rivals for the Democratic Presidential nomination that attacks on one another would only hurt the party's chances of beating President Reagan. But last week Mr. Mondale abruptly shelved his speak-no-evil politics. From Boston to Tampa, he denounced Senator Gary Hart as a cold, aloof newcomer who would betray the Democrats' bedrock ideals of fairness and compassion. ''Where's the heart? Where's the guts?'' Mr. Mondale exclaimed as he pressed his argument that Mr. Hart has severe character deficiencies. ''It is not just a horse race,'' he added later in the week. ''This has become a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party and for the future of our country.'' It was also a battle to save the Mondale campaign from total collapse. Mondale strategists acknowledged that the attacks were a last-resort effort to slow the advance of Mr. Hart, who since the Iowa precinct caucuses on Feb. 20 has wiped out Mr. Mondale's standing as the party's front-runner.

There were bear hugs all around and a standing ovation and the strain of voices that had become hoarse after two hours of cheering. Around the court at the Greensboro Coliseum, a student paraded with the Blue Devil flag, waving it in celebration of a victory against North Carolina that Duke had almost tasted twice this season and finally had the chance to savor today. The Blue Devils no longer have to be satisfied with a pat on the back and ''nice try, kid.'' This team, which relies on freshmen and sophomores, upset North Carolina, the No. 1 ranked team in the country, 77-75, in a semifinal round game of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament and established itself as a team to watch in the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament. In the other semifinal, Maryland defeated Wake Forest, 66-64.

AS community groups become more aware of the possibilities for public-access television, the debate between its users and the cable television industry in Connecticut has intensified. The state's Department of Public Utility Control, which regulates the cable television industry, requires that franchise holders provide a free, noncommercial channel for nonprofit organizations and private citizens. The cable television companies must also make available equipment, such as cameras, a studio and technical assistance. The users want a bigger commitment by the industry, while spokesmen for the industry assert that their commitment is big enough now, and that they lack the resources to increase it. A wide range of programming is available in many of the state's 26 cable television franchises, which have a total of 560,000 subscribers. Public-access shows range from televised town meetings to beauty tips, from cultural events to religious programs.

A U-Haul van pulled into the alley between a Rolls-Royce dealership and a Bank of America branch in Beverly Hills. In the cab were two men and in the back were 1,038,000 silicon semiconductor chips worth $1 million at retail. The men were joined by Nahum Sahar, the 37-year-old owner of Aero Distributors in Beverly Hills. He had been told the chips had been stolen from the maker, Signetics Corporation of Sunnyvale, and he could have the lot for $300,000. Mr. Sahar did not know that the conversation was being secretly tape-recorded or that the incident was part of an effort by electronics manufacturers to halt the growing illicit traffic in their product.

W ITH one public opinion poll showing that the vast majority of Americans favor prayer in the schools, it's perhaps not surprising that the distance between church and state seems to be narrowing as Election Day approaches. Appearing before the National Association of Evangelicals in Columbus, Ohio, last week, President Reagan hailed what he called ''a great national renewal'' that has seen Americans turn away from pornography, drug abuse and sexual promiscuity and turn ''back to God.'' What remained, he went on, was adoption of a constitutional amendment undoing the Supreme Court's 22-year-old ban. ''Hasn't something gone haywire when this great Constitution of ours is invoked to allow Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen to march on public property,'' Mr. Reagan said, ''but it supposedly prevents our children from Bible study or the saying of a simple prayer in their schools?''

A bout a century ago George Bernard Shaw noted with some vexation that stagings of Italian opera tended to be set in only one period - ''the past''- and two places - ''an exterior'' and ''an interior.'' He found in those performances ''sheer carelessness, lack of artistic conscience'' and the ''cynical conviction that nothing particularly matters in an opera so long as the singers draw good houses.'' Wagner, writing about the German Imperial Opera House, noted the same problems, referring to the ''piebald medley'' on stage, with virtuoso singers treating the rest of the opera as a ''superfluous adjunct.'' Well, matters have changed some since Wagner and Shaw were in opera houses. Attention is now lavished on sets, costumes, characters and staging. Opera directors have taken on starring roles, even getting top billing; we speak of Franco Zeffirelli's ''Boh eme,'' Patrice Chereau's ''Ring,'' Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's ''Dutchman.'' Moreover, directors are not just interpreting the repertory, but radically revising it, bending settings and characters to their wills or imaginations, in what could be the most significant and provocative movement in opera today.

SOME months ago, Charles T. Hamilton, an official in the State Department of Environmental Conservation, accompanied one of the department's law enforcement officers to investigate a suspected discrepancy on a bulkhead project - a construction activity regulated under the agency's tidal wetlands program. The two men found that the property owner had indeed built the bulkhead farther offshore than his wetlands permit had authorized. While on the site, they noticed that the man's next-door neighbor had added a nonpermitted boat ramp to his own bulkhead. Next to that project, Mr. Hamilton noted a house under construction and, upon checking, discovered that the wetlands permit for that structure had expired three years earlier. Since 1973, the Conservation Department has been charged with protecting the state's tidal wetlands - shoreline areas daily or periodically flooded by tidewater. The department's regulations require permits for most construction within 300 feet of the wetland line, and the department disallows most activities that might destroy the ecologically fragile wetlands.

Leaders of Syria's Lebanese allies left here today for the opening Monday of the new round in the Lebanese unity conference in Switzerland amid signs of continuing political discord. The Lebanese opposition leaders met here Friday and again today in an effort to agree on a joint negotiating position for the talks, which are to resume in Lausanne. The first round was held in Geneva last November. As the Lebanese departed, a high- level Soviet delegation arrived in Damascus. It is headed by Geidar A. Aliyev, a First Deputy Prime Minister, who is the first Politburo member to come here since a visit by Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko in 1980.