By JUAN O. TAMAYO
             Herald Staff Writer

             Two Cuban human rights groups whose members were rounded up by police this
             week represent a shift toward younger activists more willing to defy the limits of
             dissent set by the government, activists say.

             At least one member of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights remained under
             detention Friday.

             Oscar Elias Biscet, a 37-year-old physician, ``is still detained, and I heard one
             more person is also detained, said Biscet's wife, Elsa Morejon. Also rounded up
             were members of the dissident Cuban Liberal Current.

             Police had questioned and released 10 dissidents from both groups since
             Wednesday, activists in Havana reported.

             The Lawton Foundation had called for a street demonstration Thursday to pay
             homage to Martin Luther King for his ``civic defiance -- a term increasingly used in
             Cuba to describe aggressive but peaceful opposition to the regime.

             ``There's been a sort of generational turnover, to some groups that are more
             antagonistic, more daring, said Geraldo Sanchez, brother of dissident leader
             Elizardo Sanchez, in a telephone interview from Havana.

             While most of Cuba's better known dissidents are in their 50s and 60s, the
             dissidents rounded up by police this week were all described as being in their 30s
             and 40s, most of them professionals with little history of political activism.

             ``They haven't seen a lot of jails yet, so they are friskier, a European diplomat in
             Havana said.

             The activists detained were identified as Biscet, Migdalia Rosado, Maria de los
             Angeles Gonzalez, Miriam Cantillo, Ernesto Colas, Alberto Martinez, Pablo
             Nelson, Juan Gonzalez, Roberto Peraza, Ofelia Nardo, Gustavo Toirac and his
             wife, Ana Maria Ortega.

             Controls eased

             Most Cuban dissidents concede that President Fidel Castro eased controls on
             some opposition groups a few months before Pope John Paul II visited Cuba last
             January. Castro released about 100 political prisoners afterward.

             ``The opposition now has a larger margin. They are not bothering us all the time,
             only when public acts are scheduled, said Hector Palacios Ruiz, moderate head of
             the dissident Democratic Solidarity Party.

             Human rights activists reported that the 30 arrests of dissidents recorded in 1998
             was about half the number for 1997, and the number of dissidents in jail fell from
             482 in 1997 to 339 last month.

             But now a small but growing number of younger dissidents has set out to test the
             new, relaxed limits, meeting quietly in private homes to discuss the tactics of
             peaceful resistance and daring to stage public protests.

             November protest

             Police and plainclothes security agents briefly detained eight dissidents after they
             staged a highly unusual protest in November outside a Havana courtroom where
             an opposition journalist was to go on trial.

             And foreign journalists saw police pounce on and carry away a lone man who was
             shouting human rights and anti-government slogans in downtown Havana on the
             50th anniversary of the Universal Human Rights Declaration.

             Some dissidents have called for public protests during the Ibero-American summit,
             expected to bring more than 20 heads of government and thousands of journalists
             to Cuba around October or November.

             Campaign of `civil defiance'

             Others have endorsed a proposal for a campaign of ``civil defiance, developed
             largely in Miami by Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto, to peacefully
             challenge the government's limits on dissent.

             ``These younger people agree there's more space now for some [human rights]
             groups, but they say they got into this to improve things for all, not just themselves,
             said an official who monitors human rights in Cuba.

             Such thinking appears to concern some of the older dissidents who, because of
             age or jail experience, have tempered some of their stands.

             ``We have more of a margin, but they want to alter that margin, and could lose
             everything, Geraldo Sanchez said. ``They take a different approach, which of
             course we completely respect.
 

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