November 19, 1987

LEAD: The Bank of Mexico halted its efforts today to support the value of the peso against the dollar on the open market here, setting off a panic that sent the peso's value down as much as 59 percent.

LEAD: Panama's military leader offered to undertake sabotage and possibly assassinations in Nicaragua for the Reagan Administration, Government officials said today, explaining a veiled allusion to the matter in the Iran-contra report.

LEAD: High tech, the revolutionary design movement that brought the industrial style into thousands of American homes and apartments, seems to have vanished without a trace after a life span of less than 15 years. The look that celebrated innovation and resourcefulness, it was expressed in the beauty of exposed pipes, the plainness of restaurant ware and the practicality of hospital equipment.

LEAD: ''THERE'S something seductive about the Yellow Pages,'' said Richard Saul Wurman, the New York graphic designer, cartographer, architect and guidebook guru. ''They're so pervasive. They're like a street curb. You can look at them your whole life and never really see them.''

LEAD: When Sam Falabella buried his mother, Nancy, at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, last month, he thought he had put her to rest.