LAST week's bomb explosion near Secretary of State George P. Shultz's motorcade in La Paz, Bolivia points to one characteristic of the Reagan Administration's Latin American policy that was previously in doubt: the United States will support governments that wage a war against drugs.

After the bombing, which the Bolivian government said was the work of local cocaine traffickers, Shultz gave a talk entitled "Winning the War Against Narcotics" at a La Paz hotel. Schultz praised Bolivia's anti-drug efforts and said that Congress "has looked at your law and your performance with great interest, and I trust that your steady commitment will convince the members of our legislative body of your serious intentions. To sum up, the drug traffickers are in trouble in Bolivia."

To sum up, the United States has told its Southern neighbors to Just Say No.

Most of the time, that is.

While Schultz was placing laurels on the heads of committed anti-drug Bolivians, the situation in Panama--where Gen. Manuel Noriega, a suspected cocaine dealer, still holds power--has not changed. The Reagan Administration has talked endlessly about ousting Noriega for his actions. But the drug dealer is still around.

Is Panama then just an exception? Or can it be that, as with the rest of the Reagan Administration's Latin American policy, the U.S. has no clearly-defined goals for the region?

It denounces drugs in Bolivia, but ignores Noriega in Panama. It praises democracy in Costa Rica, but does nothing to change the situation in Chile, to say nothing of El Salvador or Paraguay. The U.S. calls for peace all over Latin America, but still funds the contras in Nicaragua.

THE Reagan Administration's Latin American policy has become so contradictory as to be meaningless.

Take the case of Chile, for example. Gen. Augusto Pinochet has ruled since 1973. Before he came to power, Chile was one of Latin America's most stable democracies until fears of Salvador Allende's "evil Socialism" began tp trouble his neighbors to the North.

Although Allende won the presidential elections of 1970 by a democratic vote, the United States, allegedly through the work of the CIA, supported the coup of 1973. Fifteen years later, Pinochet still rules and maintains "order" in Chile. Not once has President Reagan singled out Pinochet's regime as being a threat to democracy.

Just last week at one of his many campaign stops, Vice President George Bush talked about the need for democracy in all of Latin America.

Is Chile then the exception?

Nicaragua would have never caused so much stir in the U.S. if Daniel Ortega's government were not Marxist. But that fact alone is enough to convince the Reagan Administration that this Central American nation about the size of Arkansas threatens the security of the United States. It is this threat that makes Reagan push for more contra aid. Yet at the same time, he calls peace the final goal in Central America.

Never mind that the United States did not initiate the peace talks of the five Central American nations. That honor went to the Oscar Arias-Sanchez and the Costa Rican government. Instead, the Reagan Administration believes that peace can be achieved only through the funding of more weapons. The peace it really looks for is an end to Ortega.

IF the United States had a choice to replace Ortega with either a right-wing dictator who would restore "order" back to Nicaragua or a newly-developed democratic system, it would likely choose the dictator. It did so in El Salvador.