Latin America Uncertain About Y2K...12/20/99

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - From teeming coastal cities to inland jungles, Caribbean islands and Andean highlands, the diverse societies of Latin America have said they are ready for the millennium bug. But underneath the rosy official pronouncements, they share a gnawing uncertainty about Y2K. In Brazil - the region's largest country and economy - and elsewhere, officials see the greatest danger in nervous people who might stage a run on the banks, overload utilities like the phone system to make sure they work or overreact to minor, even routine, malfunctions. Latin American nations hit hard by last year's economic recession have had to scramble for resources to confront the Y2K problem - the legacy of computers programmed to express years with just two digits, so that 2000 could be read as 1900, causing a host of possible malfunctions.