August 23, 1982

At 7:20 this morning, 87 miles from John Kazmierczak's home here, a ''liberator'' pulled two levers, freeing 6,000 racing pigeons packed into wicker baskets on the back of a trailer truck. The race was on, as the pigeons went flying home to lofts all over central New Jersey, where owners like Dr. Kazmierczak waited to clock the birds' arrival times. Dr. Kazmierczak, a veterinarian, is one of thousands of participants in one of the metropolitan area's more esoteric sports: pigeon racing. ''You either love it or you can't understand it,'' he said. ''Sometimes, objectively, I can't really figure it out, but I'm addicted to it.''

New Jersey's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control has begun an inquiry into charges that struggling liquor retailers have demanded kickbacks from salesmen for wholesale companies, the agency's director said yesterday. The director, John F. Vassallo, who was appointed to the post last March, said New Jersey's deregulation of alcohol prices two years ago had led to financial problems for small retailers and an increase in the number of bankruptcies among these companies. Mr. Vassallo said the allegations had come to the state's attention in ''various ways,'' including a number of anonymous letters to the division from salesmen complaining of kickbacks. He declined to provide specific information on the charges.

The record volume and record price advances on Wall Street last week have created a booming market in the financial community's newest trading instrument, stock index futures. Three exchanges - the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Kansas City Board of Trade and the New York Futures Exchange - have for the last few months offered investors, through futures contracts, the chance to bet on the direction of various stock exchange averages. Partly because of the intense competition among the exchanges, trading had been sluggish and erratic on all the markets until stock prices became volitile. Near the end of July, volume improved perceptibly, and it exploded last week, ignited by the surging stock market and sharp drops in interest rates. Now traders are heartened by large profits and the prospect of growing commissions and the exchanges are predicting that all the contracts will survive and flourish.

An article in Metropolitan Report on Saturday incorrectly identified the role of Barbara Fife in the campaign for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in New York.She is campaign manager for H. Carl McCall.

Mexico's confidence in its entire economic and political system has been badly shaken in recent weeks. In a matter of months, the country has been plunged from a period of unparalleled prosperity into its worst financial crisis in memory. Many Mexicans are still reeling from the shock, confused about what has happened, and why. At the same time, they feel angry and betrayed at having been led down the path of consumerism for five years only to be jerked back to the rough road of austerity for no apparent reason. Aggravating the uncertainty, President Jose Lopez Portillo, who is widely blamed for the crisis, is in his final months in office and his lame-duck administration has at times seemed virtually crippled. But President-elect Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado cannot provide immediate leadership because tradition requires that he remain out of view until his inauguration on Dec. 1.