After a gunman with a semiautomatic pistol opened fire in a Sao Paulo movie theater recently, killing three people and wounding six, a police official said, "We are not used to this type of crime because it's the kind that happens in the United States."

His words might seem ironic. While crime hits historic lows in the United States, it has risen across Latin America. Each day brings a catalog of mayhem: assassinations in Colombia, death squads in Brazil, hostage standoffs in Argentina.

But, though its streets are generally more dangerous, Latin America has largely been spared a singular form of U.S. violence: the troubled gunman who for little apparent reason shoots up a workplace, school, church or some other unlikely locale, leaving terror and trauma in his wake. These crimes are starting to seem commonplace in the United States.

The Latin American media devote considerable coverage to the killing sprees, attempting to understand how a society seen as a model of prosperity and democracy can breed barbarity. The randomness and senselessness of tragedies such as the April massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, where one of the teenage shooters drove a BMW, appall and perplex Latin Americans.

"There is some social psychopathology that expresses itself in an openly hostile and aggressive manner against the society itself," said Orlando D'Adamo, a psychologist at the University of Buenos Aires. "In a place with such a strong message that you are the master of your fate and success depends exclusively on you, when for some reason you don't succeed there is enormous pressure. In Latin American countries, we blame failure on the social context."

"These crimes occur in the richest society on the planet," said Roberto DaMatta, a Brazilian anthropologist at Notre Dame University in Indiana who divides his time between the U.S. and his homeland. "They have a lot to do with the fragmentation and pulverization of social relations in the American world," he said, "a universe in which people follow schedules and live in bubbles, communicating little, even with relatives. In a society of individuals, confrontations are daily, the solitude is immense and virtual realities become more basic than others."

On the other hand, in Latin America the strength of traditional family and friendship networks shields against loneliness, alienation and, according to those interviewed, berserk shooting sprees.

"Everybody wants to succeed, but we don't seek the American dream as they do," said Bibianna Cabale, 28, an Argentine nurse. "Perhaps we settle for other things--family, friends. We still have certain values that make us different than the Yanquis. They are very cold, individualist, every man for himself."

This is the prism through which Latin Americans view the United States: They see a society in which police, the courts and other institutions generally function with admirable openness and effectiveness. But they also see a rigid mentality and severe expectations that can cause people to snap; a culture that confirms the stereotype of the individual as solitary gunslinger and society as a hostile frontier.

JOHANNESBURG -- Not long ago, outside the razor-wire-topped fence around our house here, I drove past a man in street clothes with a large pistol tucked in the leather holster at his waist. After a second, I decided he must be a security guard. But I looked at that gun and scoffed. What was he going to do with such a puny gun, and holstered besides? Up the street was a guard pacing a driveway with a pump-action shotgun. Now that might do some good.

Could this be me? Four years ago, when I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at the sight of a civilian with a gun on my block I would have called the police.

But guns are everywhere in Africa. Here the special line for checking guns at the airport is often as long as the one to go through the metal detector. Police and army roadblocks are standard practice all over the continent, manned by young men with huge automatic weapons dangling carelessly from their shoulders. In South Africa, you might be asked for a bribe. In some other countries, the roadblocks are often an encounter with hungry, drunken youths itching to show their authority.

Since moving here four years ago, I have learned to distinguish an AK-47 from a South African R-4 or an R-5 from an Uzi--though this skill isn't much use. They can all kill you. Still, the learning process is a little like getting to know the kinds of trees and birds that are native here.

The first time I arrived late at night at my hotel in Angola I thought I was done for when two figures moved out of the shadows with machine guns. Now I know they are the doormen, and I don't like getting out of the car until I see the glint of their hardware.

South Africa is considering new anti-gun legislation. But there will always be easy access to guns--big guns--nearby. Mozambique is awash with weapons, left over from its long civil war. By some estimates there are still enough AK-47's around to arm every man, woman and child in that country.

At night in our lush suburb with a pool in every yard, the pop of gunfire can be heard regularly. But it usually takes a visitor to remind me. Like the screeches of the ibises that peck the thatch from our roof, I don't even hear them anymore.

The latest round of drug-smuggling arrests at Miami International Airport raises a question that U.S. officials don't want to hear: whether the United States should be included among the countries that are "decertified" for tolerating drug trafficking.

As you know, a U.S. law requires the President to issue an annual "certification" on foreign countries' efforts in the war on drugs, and to penalize poor performers with economic sanctions. Latin Americans have long criticized this process as an exercise of U.S. hypocrisy.

"The U.S. should be evaluated," says Bruce Bagley, a leading drug-trafficking expert with the University of Miami. "If we look seriously at the U.S., there are many areas in which it should be decertified. We tell Latin American countries to toe the line, and yet we have allowed major cocaine-smuggling rings to operate for many years right under our noses."

Not long ago, U.S. agents arrested 13 Miami International Airport workers, including three supervisors, on drug-trafficking charges. The raid came shortly after the spectacular Aug. 23 raid in which 58 Miami airport workers were arrested on similar charges. Many had been smuggling drugs for at least three years, and perhaps for more than a decade, U.S. officials say.

Clinton administration officials say the arrests are evidence of the U.S. success in cracking down on drug traffickers at home. But critics wonder why the U.S. government, so quick to single out Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, takes so long to detect U.S. drug-trafficking rings, or to identify major U.S. drug lords.

Indeed, it's hard to believe that all the bad guys in the drug underworld are in Latin America, when much of the business takes place in the U.S. The U.S. is the world's biggest cocaine consumer, paying for about 40 percent of the drug's world production. There are about 14 million users of illicit drugs in the U.S., including 3.6 million chronic cocaine users, according to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.

If the U.S. continues to judge other countries for harboring cocaine-smuggling rings, it should get ready to be judged by others on its own record of pursuing domestic drug rings.

VERACRUZ, Mexico--Nestor Castellanos eased his 18-wheeler onto the freeway, carefully checking the rearview mirror. Tailing him was a black minivan with two pistol-packing guards. In the seat behind Castellanos perched a former riot police officer, tear gas at the ready. "We've got dangerous cargo," warned the driver.

Castellanos was beginning one of the most perilous journeys in late 20th century Mexico: carrying bolts of fabric to a ladies' clothing factory in the capital, about 200 miles northwest of this port.

In another sign of the collapse of order in Mexico, brigands are terrorizing the highways in a way not seen since the days of the 1910–17 revolution. Assaults on trucks have soared from a few hundred to perhaps 40,000 a year. Businesses are losing millions of dollars; some now send armed guards to escort truckers like Castellanos, much as Wells Fargo did with its stagecoaches in the Old West.

"There are no authorities. There's a void. [The highways] have become no man's land," said Luis Angel Carvallo, head of the truckers association in Veracruz.

"There's been a total crack in society," said Carlos Monsivais, a social critic. "Organized crime has become an alternative state."

Trucks aren't the only targets of the modern-day pirates. In the first six months of this year, nearly 300 buses were assaulted on federal highways, according to the Interior Ministry. But authorities claim to have sharply reduced raids against such passenger vehicles, crimes they say are generally committed by amateurs. In contrast, truck robbery has become so organized and lucrative that authorities are comparing it to narcotics trafficking.

For Castellanos and other truck drivers, piracy has transformed their work from a secure occupation into a life-threatening one. Occasionally, Castellanos has the luxury of traveling with armed guards on the freeway, as he did on this recent trip from Veracruz to Mexico City.

But providing the guards can double the cost of transportation for the clients. Like most Mexican truckers, Castellanos generally travels alone at night on poorly lighted local roads, since his company can't afford to pay the expensive freeway tolls and remain competitive.

When he arrives safely at his destination, he breathes a sigh of relief. "I commend myself to God. I go always with Him," Castellanos said. "What else can we do? We have to go on working."

Believe it or not, there are now over 5 million school kids in America on psychotropic drugs, most of which are prescribed and administered by the schools themselves. That's the report we get from Kelly O'Meara, writing in Insight magazine on June 28. In addition, according to Teacher Magazine of December 1996, there are four million kids on Ritalin alone, one of the most powerful of the drugs now being given routinely to children in American schools.

What is most disturbing, however, is the growing awareness that the increased violence among school children may have more to do with the drugs than with the guns they use to carry out their violence. We know, for example, that Eric Harris, 18, who, with his friend Dylan Klebold, murdered his fellow students at Columbine, had been taking Luvox, one of the new antidepressant drugs.

We also know that T. J. Solomon, 15, who shot and wounded six classmates at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., on May 20 was on Ritalin for depression. Shawn Cooper, 15, who fired two shotgun rounds, narrowly missing students and teachers at his high school in Notus, Idaho, was also on Ritalin.

Kip Kinkel, 15, was on Ritalin and Prozac. He murdered his parents and then went on to school where he fired on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Also, we know that Mitchell Johnson, the 13-year-old student at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark., who mowed down several children and a teacher with his friend Andrew Golden, 11, was on some sort of medication since he was being treated by a psychiatrist.

Ritalin is used most commonly to treat a disorder known as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder). What are the symptoms of this disorder that has afflicted millions of American children? According to a Time cover story in July 1994, "ADHD has three main hallmarks: extreme distractibility, an almost reckless impulsiveness and, in some but not all cases, knee-jiggling, toe-tapping hyperactivity that makes sitting still all but impossible." Ritalin is supposed to alleviate the symptoms. It does not cure the disorder.

Drs. Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey, authors of "Driven to Distraction," write, "ADD lives in the biology of the brain and the central nervous system. The exact mechanism underlying ADD remains unknown." In other words, we are dealing with a neurological enigma wrapped in a biological mystery. But is it possible that there is a much simpler explanation for ADD, one that would put a lot of doctors and drug manufacturers out of business? Indeed, is it not possible that the school atmosphere itself is causing the extreme distractibility and impulsive behavior that are the major symptoms of ADD?

There was no such thing as ADD or ADHD when I was going to school back in the 1930s and '40s. In fact, you couldn't possibly have Attention Deficit Disorder in the kind of classrooms I was in. First of all, all of the desks and seats were bolted to the floor. You couldn't move them. Also, the walls were generally bare. Maybe a picture of George Washington, or a map. Otherwise there was nothing on the walls to distract anyone.

The room was also silent. You were not permitted to talk to your fellow classmates during class. The teacher was the focus of attention. She sat at her desk in front of the class and exercised a benign, no-nonsense discipline on all of us. She taught us all the same thing, and she used rational methods of teaching, methods that had been proven over the centuries to produce academic results. Our teachers were not interested in our feelings or our sexuality or trying to change our values.

Thus, there was no ADD. Any impulsive behavior would have landed you in the principal's office.

But now, let's fast forward to 1999 and enter a typical first-grade classroom in today's public school. The kids are no longer seated in rows in desks bolted to the floor. They are now seated around tables, interacting with each other, pestering each other, chatting, interrupting. Each child is doing something different. One may be writing, another reading, another drawing. One child may be under a table reading a book; another may be sprawled on the floor drawing a large picture. Several children may be working on a project.

The walls are now covered with every conceivable kind of distraction: dinosaurs, Mickey Mouse, bulletin boards, pictures of animals, travel posters, you name it. Then there are fish tanks, gerbils, and rabbits to grab one's attention. Mobiles hang from the ceiling, swaying in the breeze. Anything and everything that could possibly distract a child is there.

The teacher, of course, is no longer the focus of attention. She is now a facilitator who wanders around the room, helping one child here, chatting with another there. She is also using the most irrational teaching methods ever devised by so-called educators: whole language, invented spelling, the new new math, plus sensitivity training, values clarification, transcendental meditation, cooperative learning, death ed., sex ed., suicide ed. She's very much interested in your feelings, your sexuality, your family, your thoughts about death, suicide, abortion, feminism, homophobia, the environment, global warming, and world citizenship.

Is it any wonder that so many children suffer the equivalent of a cognitive breakdown in American schools? The entire school configuration is designed to cause distraction, inattention, frustration, impulsiveness, hatred, anger, and violence. And the only way that many children can be forced to endure that atmosphere is by drugging them.

Most Americans have grown to trust their government to protect them and their rights.

This is why Americans are flirting with a loss of all freedom. If you wonder what a total government power monopoly will be like, all you need to do is examine the reaction by government schools to the recent rash of student attacks.

Remember, government schools in all 50 states long ago banned firearms. So what's the next step?

School districts all over America are increasingly treating all students like criminals. In Michigan, one school system has banned book bags, lunchboxes--even coats and jackets--from school premises for fear they might be used to conceal weapons. A 12-year-old boy in Louisiana was suspended and then locked up in a juvenile detention center for two weeks for telling fellow students, "I'm going to get you." In Pennsylvania, a 14-year-old girl was strip-searched and suspended for two weeks when, during a class discussion, she observed that she understood how unpopular students might eventually resort to violence. A 9-year-old in Virginia was suspended and later expelled for sketching a gun in class. Four boys in Arkansas overheard talking about guns were taken to the police station, strip-searched without their parents' knowledge and suspended or expelled. A 16-year-old in Virginia was suspended for the rest of the year for writing an essay about a nuclear bomb.

Has America gone mad? Is this overreaction or collective insanity?

I'm afraid it's neither. Instead, it's the predictable eventuality when government is given the authority--tacitly or otherwise--to be the sole guarantor of our safety, security and liberty. That's where we're headed in America. The government schools are already there. To see what life in an American police state will be like one, two, five years down the road, just take a glimpse of the Gestapo tactics being employed in U.S. government schools.

You don't even have to go to your kid's government school to see the early stages of the coming fascism. You can see it when you go to the airport and you are forced--at government's insistence--to prove you are not a criminal. You can see it when you go to your local theme park with your children and guards search your backpacks and purses for weapons.

Slowly but surely Americans are being forced to cope with and live with government-mandated security checkpoints, draconian rules, random searches and seizures. Americans are so conditioned to this trend as a way of life that most even defend it as a necessary evil as we head into the brave new world of the 21st century.

Do you like what you see when you look into the mirror, America? Do you like what your kids see?