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.