  We take up again the study of the mass spectrum of the quark sector in a
model with gauge symmetry $SU(3)_{c}\otimes SU(3)_{L}\otimes U(1)_{X}$ (331).
In a special type II-like 331 model, we obtain specific zero-texture mass
matrices for the quarks which predict four massless quarks ($u,c,d,s$) and two
massive quarks ($b,t$) at the electroweak scale ($\sim $ GeV). By considering
the mixing between the SM quarks and new exotic quarks at large scales
predicted by the model, we find that a third quark (associated to the charm
quark) acquires a mass. The remaining light quarks ($u,d,s$) get small masses
($\sim$ MeV) via radiative corrections.
