While the mood outside the Miami Arena Saturday night -- where an estimated 4,000 protested Los Van Van concert -- was hostile, some people believe it could have been worse.

Much worse.

And, they add, the relative calm -- six arrests and isolated rock- egg- and bottle-throwing notwithstanding -- shows Miami's Cuban community has matured.

``There has definitely been an opening made for different points of view, something I don't think would have happened five years ago, which is a very significant step,'' said John de Leon, president of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has defended Cuban exile hard-liners and concert promoters in free speech issues.

``What we saw [Saturday] night was a highly charged event on both sides,'' de Leon said. ``But the community was relatively unscathed by the whole thing and I think it demonstrated to everybody that people can have strongly opposing viewpoints and be able to express them and live together in the same place.''

The proof was not only in Saturday night's events, he said, but in preceding weeks of tension, during which concert promoter Debbie Ohanian toured Cuban Miami radio programs and some people on either side of the issue agreed to disagree.

``There is a real desire from members of the community to allow the debate to go forward, to allow people to express themselves,'' De Leon said.

Not all Miami Cubans agree. Some say the concert controversy only strengthens their resolve and unifies their ranks.

Ninoska Perez Castellon, a spokeswoman for the Cuban American National Foundation and host of her own radio program, said the hard-line Cuban American community has always tolerated other views.

``I am so bored of hearing the labels they want to put on this community,'' she said. ``Everybody is welcome on my program. Just as they were five years ago and 10 years ago and 15 years ago.

``There has been no change. The only change is that the U.S. government is giving visas to musicians now.''

She said nobody criticized the Cuban Committee for Democracy, which held a rally to promote freedom of speech Thursday, for expelling two anti-concert people who had gone to listen to rally organizers anyway.

``That is not tolerance. The ACLU said they understand, but that in reality it is the police who violated their rights by throwing them out,'' Perez said. ``But the ones who asked the police to throw them out are the CCD. And nobody is calling them intransigent.''

De Leon acknowledged Sunday that both rally organizers and police were wrong.

``They were there to listen to what people were saying and simply being labeled as someone who was against Los Van Van doesn't give anyone the right to expel them,'' he said.

But he credited Miami Police with keeping things under control Saturday.

Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, said he also noticed a ``definite'' difference between the concert protest and past debates.

``The way they [protesters] behaved was very good. It was almost 100 percent non violent,'' said Basulto, who went to the movies instead.

``It was confrontational, but not violent. That's the message we are trying to take to the people inside of Cuba.''

Raul de Velasco, president of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, also thought more space had been opened up for people of contrasting views.

``It's a breakthrough,'' he said. ``Despite all the intimidation . . . there were at least 2,000 people inside. It shows that the atmosphere of fear and intimidation did not work.''

Jose Tonito Rodriguez said he was startled by the shouting crowd as he waded through it from his car to the arena.

But he drew a contrast, saying the scene was much more controlled than the Gonzalo Rubalcaba concert at the Gusman Center in 1996, where many concertgoers were struck and spat upon.

``A huge step forward,'' said Rodriguez, a Cuban-born artist and photographer who lives in Hialeah.

``For the first time, the world was able to see that there are various types of exiles with different opinions,'' Rodriguez, 38, said. ``People are losing the fear of thinking differently than the official exile voice tells you how to think.''