Upheavals Abroad Cast Shadow Over Holidays : Conflicts: Peace on Earth is elusive for many in Panama, Romania, El Salvador and the Philippines, and friends in the Southland share their anxiety.

As the final Christmas of the 1980s draws near, Arturo Hassan waits every hour for telephone facsimiles out of Panama City--frightening, sometimes contradictory reports that starkly dispel the notion of peace on Earth.

The faxes are provided to him by a source he feels compelled to keep secret. They reach him several times a day at his office in Pasadena, detailing every turn in the bloody assault by U.S. troops on fugitive Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega and his forces. Although Hassan, 55, left Latin America nearly 20 years ago, he reads with fear.

His brother is down there. So are his six sisters and their families--more nephews, nieces and relatives than he can count.

“I’m going through a hell of an ordeal,” he said Friday. “My concern is about the roving paramilitary people down there that Noriega gave the weapons to. These are ex-convicts; these are men that Noriega let out of the jail. That’s where the danger comes in--the snipers and so forth.

“You cannot talk on the telephone because they’re all bugged. . . . I haven’t slept but about seven hours in the last three days. It’s very difficult.”

Like many of the tens of thousands of immigrants now living in the Los Angeles area, Hassan has found it is not a season to be jolly. In fact, global events are overshadowing the holiday season for ethnic groups in all quarters of the city. Lithuanians talk of sovereignty from the Soviet Union. Filipinos send packages of food and clothing back to the homeland, jittery over the prospects of another attempted coup. Salvadorans look to the television for reports of new guerrilla attacks.

At a storefront printing shop in Bell, Romanian immigrant Nick Moroaica sat with his wife, Dana, in front of a flickering black-and-white television, eagerly following the overthrow of hard-line Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Periodically, the telephone rang as another member of Southern California’s Romanian community--estimated at 25,000--called to say a new TV report was on the air. Moroaica would change the channel, pointing at significant moments shown on the tiny screen.

“You see, in the middle of the Romanian flag there’s a Communist symbol,” he said as one march was under way. “Now people are waving Romanian flags with holes in the middle.”

For Moroaica it had been a particularly taxing week. He had talked Sunday night with an uncle in the city of Timisoara shortly after pro-democracy demonstrators began clashing with government security forces.

His uncle was so fearful of being overheard that he said almost nothing, except that “something is going on here,” Moroaica said.

After that, Moroaica lost contact for four days, a time in which the reported death toll grew from a few dozen to a few hundred to 4,000 or more. On Thursday, Moroaica made more than 100 calls in six hours, he said, desperately trying to get through on jammed telephone lines. At last, he reached his uncle and learned that freedom had come--at least in Timisoara.

“He was just yelling on the telephone, jubilating,” Moroaica recalled. “He said, ‘Do you understand it, we are free! We are free!’ ”

Even so, Romanians were planning a massive demonstration--the third in two days--this morning at Los Angeles City Hall, where a blood drive was to begin. Pastor Liviu Olah of the Romanian Baptist Church in Bellflower was dividing time Friday between preparations for the rally and his duties at the church, which include planning a Sunday Christmas festival. He had not yet heard from relatives in Romania.

“The security police there destroyed all the bottles of blood; they are completely out of blood in the hospitals in Romania,” he said. “We slept last night about three hours. Our phone’s been ringing all the time.”

At La Placita Church, a Salvadoran refugee center in downtown Los Angeles, Father Luis Olivares also was dealing with communication difficulties.

“Contact by telephone (with El Salvador) is almost impossible,” he said, “although we have been able to send fax transmittals two or three times daily. The information we get by fax is general--a chronology of the day’s events or the damage reports of certain areas. We try to convey specific inquiries when we get them.”

Olivares said it is difficult to tell how many of the church’s transmissions get through. “Church workers, like most of the people (in El Salvador), are forced to move around for their security. Areas get bombed out. We never know where our contacts are going to be.”

Church volunteer Jose Casco, 38, learned in one recent report that his brother had been killed.

“I’m thinking what Christmas must be like for my parents and my brothers and sisters in El Salvador,” he said. “How am I to enjoy the holidays while they suffer there?”

For many without fax machines, the fate of loved ones was a tormenting mystery.

Julio Morales Carasquilla, 25, his wife, Gladys, and three small children are living in an apartment in Van Nuys after fleeing the Panama Canal Zone on a U.S. military plane. The Carasquillas have many relatives who live in the urban neighborhoods hardest hit by the fighting of recent days. They do not know if they are alive or dead.

“They are in the middle of the shooting,” Julio Carasquilla said. “I feel bad, because this is going to be a very ugly Christmas for them.”

Just down the hall, Armando Ayarza, 36, and Alberto Vazquez, 30, watch the Spanish-language news on a small black-and-white television, shocked by the bombardment and heavy gunfire in residential areas such as the San Miguelito neighborhood. Vazquez has talked to his parents in the city of Colon and they told him they were frightened, but in good condition. Ayarza was less fortunate; he spoke for a moment to his mother in Panama City but the line went dead.

At the Filipino-American Service Group Inc. in downtown Los Angeles, hefty Balikbayan boxes--the cardboard containers that Filipinos traditionally send to the homeland during the holiday season--were stacked up in unusually large numbers, said executive director Connie Guerrero.

Dozens are sent out twice a month, she said. One family has sent 36 boxes, she said.

In Arcadia, a Christmas party of about 20 Filipino expatriates turned into a two-hour political briefing with the arrival of a surprise guest: the top aide to the president of the Philippine Senate.

The aide, Rafael Fernando, gave eager guests his insights into the attempted coup earlier this month that left at least 113 people dead and about 600 injured.

“It has definitely tempered the celebration,” said Ramon Alcaraz, 74, who invited Fernando to the party. “And I think it has tempered the attitudes of many people here and at home.”

Times staff writers Victor Merina, Darrell Dawsey, Eugene Ahn and Sebastian Rotella contributed to this story.