What was going on when I was born?

The Hotel del Carlo stood like a cracked accordion on the Plaza de la Republica. Smoke rose from the debris of the Hotel Romano, five blocks away, while on the Avenida Juarez anxious family members gathered to await word about relatives buried in the debris of a Government technical school. Waiting to identify the dead and seeking news of the missing was an all-too-common experience for the people of Mexico City today. One day after a powerful earthquake hit this city of more than 18 million people, scenes of recovery, narrow escape and disastrous loss were replayed again and again against a backdrop of crushed buildings, wailing ambulances and hushed crowds.

A second major earthquake struck Mexico tonight, causing more buildings to fall and knocking out power in the northern part of the capital. At least 1,300 people were known dead and 1,000 were missing as a result of the initial earthquake on Thursday, a spokesman for President Miguel de la Madrid said. [The Associated Press said the Government had increased the official death toll to 2,000.] The presidential spokesman said more than 5,000 people had been treated in hospitals and that the death toll here might exceed 3,000. [In Washington, a senior State Department official said that the first earthquake had killed three Americans and that the second had damaged several hospitals in Mexico City and forced the closing of the city's airport.] Red Cross workers said tonight's earthquake toppled buildings in the downtown area and the Roma district, where damage in the initial quake had been heavy.

In the political stagecraft preceding the November summit meeting in Geneva, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger appears to have assigned himself the job of dashing what he regards as exaggerated expectations. Lest the audience or the other players forget, Mr. Weinberger has filled the theater of diplomacy with reminders that he considers the Soviet Union the villain of world affairs. He has revealed what he says are new details of Soviet efforts to buy or steal American military technology. He has urged cutbacks in the number of Soviet citizens allowed in the United States, saying they are all intelligence agents ''or might just as well be.''

The French Defense Minister resigned today and the head of France's intelligence agency was dismissed as the Government moved to end the political crisis surrounding the sabotage of an antinuclear protest ship in New Zealand. The actions represented a tacit admission by the Government that its agents were responsible for sinking the ship, which belonged to the environmentalist group Greenpeace, and that the facts of French complicity had been withheld from Government investigators. They Deny Responsibility Press reports have linked the two officials to complicity in the bombing of the vessel, the Rainbow Warrior. Both denied responsibility for the sinking.

The Justice Department said today that it was investigating whether public schools had engaged in an ''offensive'' form of discrimination by lowering academic standards to make it easier for minority students to graduate. William Bradford Reynolds, the Associate Attorney General for civil rights, said the inquiry was begun after reports some minority students were placed in programs ''that were not teaching them the basic fundamentals but were geared to just getting them through and giving them a diploma.'' To avoid charges of discrimination, he said in an interview today, some schools may have downgraded their curriculums to assure that large numbers of minority students graduate. ''If it's something that can be tied to race,'' he said, ''then it is highly offensive to the Constitution.''

The Federal Highway Administrator said today that it could take New York City years to get all its money for trading in funds from Westway unless Congress appropriated more money for such trade-ins. ''The pot will have to be expanded,'' said the Administrator, Ray A. Barnhart. ''What we have presently is inadequate with this addition.'' Governor Cuomo and Mayor Koch announced Thursday that they were abandoning the decade-long fight to build Westway and would seek to trade the Federal funds committed to the project for money to finance a less-elaborate road along the West Side of Manhattan and to help mass transit. $1.7 Billion at Stake It would be the largest single such exchange in the history of the Interstate System program. Officials said that the value of the trade-in would be about $1.7 billion, but that the exact amount was undetermined.

John Z. DeLorean was indicted by a Federal grand jury today on charges that he defrauded investors in the failed DeLorean Motor Company of $12.5 million and used $8.9 million of that amount for his own enrichment. The indictment charges in part that Mr. DeLorean, once regarded as heir apparent to the presidency of the General Motors Corporation, engaged in a pattern of racketeering beginning in 1978 that stemmed from his conduct of the business of DeLorean Motors. Mr. DeLorean's lawyer said the former automobile executive would plead not guilty. Mr. DeLorean was accused of using the $8.9 million to help buy the Logan Manufacturing Company, which is based in Utah and makes equipment for grooming ski slopes, and to buy such personal items as $28,000 in jewelry.

One day in 1970, Chancellor Willy Brandt arrived by train in the East German city of Erfurt. He was on a mission that he hoped would end in the normalization of ties between the two German states that had emerged from war and the ideological division of Europe. Thousands of Germans thronged Mr. Brandt, shouting, ''Willy! Willy!'' The crowds broke through police barricades, clamoring for the West German leader to appear on the balcony of the Erfurter Hof hotel.

The Ugandan Government announced today that it had lifted an eight-week-old nationwide curfew and ordered a freeze on the bank accounts of the deposed President, Milton Obote, and 15 of his top aides. The Kenyan press agency also reported that the Ugandan Government and the rebel National Resistance Army had agreed to resume peace talks next week in Nairobi, Kenya.

The police here say that they have collected more than 200 witnesses and 1,000 pieces of evidence in the sinking of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in July, but that they have no proof of French Government involvement. One of their problems, a spokesman said today, is a difficulty in obtaining reliable information from the French, who have been slow to respond to requests from New Zealand. ''Dealings with the French Government have been very, very awkward,'' said Detective Sgt. Terence J. Bachelor. ''It's hard to get information, and when we do get it, it's hard to tell if it's reliable or not.''

For a long time, Paul Quiles, who was named France's Defense Minister today, was known in the Socialist Party as Robespaul. The name was meant to recall Robespierre, the ruthless French revolutionary responsible for the Terror in 1793 and 1794, in which thousands of ''enemies of the people'' were executed. Mr. Quiles (pronounced kee-LESS), who had been Minister of Urban Affairs, Housing and Transportation, replaced Charles Hernu, Defense Minister since 1981. Mr. Hernu resigned over the bombing of a boat that was to be used in a protest by Greenpeace against French nuclear tests in the Pacific. The new Defense Minister, who is 43 years old, achieved his tough reputation presiding at a Socialist Party congress in 1981, shortly after the party came to power. He called for a purge of civil servants reluctant to carry out the Socialist program.

The earthquake that wrecked much of Mexico City rippled through this coastal resort with a mild tremor that the authorities said had caused no casualties and no damage. Beyond Acapulco, however, in the surrounding state of Guerrero, there were scattered episodes of violent upheaval that the authorities said left two dead and 36 injured.