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The owner of a department store in the provincial capital
of Culiacan was driving to work one morning last September
when three unmarked sedans without license plates
surrounded his car. As passersby watched in terror, four
men with assault rifles hauled the man, Romulo Rico Urrea,
from his car, forced him into one of theirs and sped away.

Mr. Rico has not been seen since Sept. 25, 1996. But a
notebook dropped in his car by one of the kidnappers, as
well as evidence gathered by military investigators, links
the abduction to General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, the
former head of Mexico's antidrug agency, who was arrested
last month on charges of collaborating with one of the
country's powerful cocaine barons.

Mr. Rico is one of at least 51 Mexicans who have
disappeared in the last three years after kidnappings in
which there were signs of government security force
involvement, according to lists compiled by relatives,
human rights organizations and the press. Now, evidence is
emerging to tie many of these abductions to the war
against powerful drug traffickers, which has increasingly
been under the command of Mexico's military.

''We are everyday citizens under attack, caught in the
crossfire between narcos, authorities and
narcoauthorities,'' said Lucia Solis de Jurado, whose
husband, a semipreciousstone trader from the border city
of Ciudad Juarez, was seized on the front step of his home
on Oct. 6, 1996. ''It has gotten to the point where it can
happen to anyone.'' Most of the victims have no proven ties
to drug traffickers or other criminal activities, relatives
and humanrights leaders contend, although a number have
had brushes with the authorities.

''They tend to be businessmen, students and other
citizens who were going about their lives,'' said Oscar
Loza of the Commission for the Defense of Human Rights in
the state of Sinaloa, where at least nine people have
disappeared.

Mexico's military has traditionally played a supporting
role in the drug trafficking fight, mainly eradicating
crops. Shortly after he took office in 1994, President
Ernesto Zedillo, facing widespread corruption in the state
and federal police, began to place military officers and
troops in key positions in the battle against the drug
cartels.

General Gutierrez was named Mexico's chief antidrug
official in December 1996, and army officers were given
command of state and municipal police forces in Sinaloa.
Last week, the army took over narcotics operations in the
border state of Baja California.

Since the arrest of General Gutierrez, a number of
families of missing Mexicans have come forward after months
and even years of silence. The number of known victims is
growing. There is evidence that in addition to Mr. Rico,
five men who disappeared since last September in northern
Mexico were abducted in operations commanded by General
Gutierrez and carried out by his deputies during his
twomonth tenure as head of the national drug agency or
before that, when he was the senior commander of the Fifth
Military Region in central Mexico.

The abductions in which General Gutierrez appears to
have had a role are only a fraction of those reported. The
general's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

The disclosures about the kidnappings raise new
questions about General Gutierrez's ascent to the highest
position in Mexico's war on drugs, and about Mr.
Zedillo's moves to expand the role of the armed forces in
the anti narcotics campaign.

Several months before, Defense Minister Enrique
Cervantes Aguirre recom mended General Gutierrez to the
president for the top antidrug job, the Mexican military
had substantial evidence implicating the general's two
closest aides in the kidnapping of Mr. Rico. Both aides
were arrested with their commander on drug charges on Feb.
18. The kidnapping allegations apparently never reached the
highest levels. Mr. Cervantes acknowledged that neither he
nor Mr. Zedillo had had any doubts about General Gutierrez
until about two weeks before his arrest.

Mr. Rico's relatives believe he came under suspicion of
drug trafficking because Miguel Angel Rico Urrea, his
brother, was falsely accused on drug charges in 1992 and
served prison time before he was cleared. A judge ordered
his release, but the day he was to leave prison he was
murdered.

On Sept. 16, 1996, soldiers in Culiacan swarmed into
the home of Enrique Rico, another brother. The raid,
conducted without a warrant, was led by a brash officer who
identified himself with a name that later proved to be
false. Romulo Rico was seized nine days later. At first,
federal agents told his relatives he was in custody at
their headquarters. A day later the same agents denied that
they had ever seen him, relatives said.

In recent days, a halfdozen northern Mexican families,
with nine disappeared relatives among them, have held
meetings in the cramped Mexico City apartment where Romulo
Rico's wife and children have taken refuge. They found one
another through humanrights organizations they had
approached after General Gutierrez's arrest. Humanrights
activists who helped them have received death threats,
apparently to stop their publicizing disappearance cases.

Mrs. Jurado and her family have become outraged about
the official response to their search for her husband,
Ruben Guillermo Jurado, 39. A senior official of Chihuahua
state, where the Jurados live, confirmed that Mr. Jurado
had been seized by armed men wearing federal drug police
uniforms.

Nevertheless the official, who insisted on anonymity,
said investigators believed Mr. Jurado might have been
kidnapped by traffickers, because of ''narcoticsrelated
wrapping materials'' in his home. The Jurados say the
police never searched his residence or workshop.