September 21, 1985

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.''