Cristian Zamora won a close contest for the Mayor of Cuenca. The representative of the Democratic Left only secured 18.56% of the votes.

The next mayor of Cuenca, Cristian Zamora, is 42 years old. He entered politics 18 years ago. He is an industrial engineer and has a doctorate in administrative sciences.

Zamora made his appearance in politics as Marcelo Cabrera’s private secretary, when the two were part of the Democratic Left (ID). Cabrera was completing his first term in municipal administration (2004-2009) and Zamora was one of his trusted men.

In 2014, when Cabrera returned to the Cuenca Mayor’s Office with the Igualdad movement, Zamora won a seat as urban councilor for that movement. But before he finished the term, he went from ally to opponent.

In 2019, he repeated on the ballot and won re-election as councilor, but this time with the Participa-Juntos Podemos alliance, led by Paúl Carrasco. Of the councilors who reached a seat that year, he was the one with the fewest votes.

In 2021, he re-joined the Democratic Left. Since then, Zamora already had aspirations to seek the role of Mayor of Cuenca, but he did not have a solid political organization in place.

He looked for allies and was close to closing an agreement with Dora Ordóñez, who finally decided on the alliance Hagamoslo con Shungo, together with Adrián Castro.

Zamora, still as part of the ID, received the support of the ‘Move’ movement (formerly PAIS Alliance) and formed the Atrévete Juntos Podemos alliance, under which he finally won the election for Mayor of Cuenca.

In his two terms on the Cantonal Council, Zamora gained popularity by initiating audit processes for the projects of the Municipality. One of those cases was the contract that the Municipality awarded to a private consortium for the installation of radars in Cuenca.

Zamora denounced that there were alleged irregularities in that process and the issue became his banner of the electoral campaign.

The mayor-elect of Cuenca also faced several controversies when he was a councilor. In November 2020, he described as “vandals” the women who painted graffiti on the Vivas nos queremos bridge, a space that has become a symbol of the feminist struggle in Cuenca.

Zamora also has a lawsuit against him for slander, imposed by the current mayor Pedro Palacios.

The resolution of this process is pending.

The future mayor of Cuenca is married and has two children. He has also worked as a professor at the University of Cuenca and is a shareholder of the Megacero company.

Cantonal Council of Cuenca will be made up of have five political forces

The new Cantonal Council of Cuenca will not have a majority. The seats are distributed very evenly among five political forces.

Citizen Revolution will keep the largest number of seats: four. This result was celebrated as a triumph by the political organization, which only came in fifth place for the Mayor’s Office of Cuenca with Roque Ordóñez.

The correista party is followed by three political groups that will each have three seats: the Democratic Left, led by the elected mayor, Cristian Zamora; the Hagamoslo con Shungo alliance, led by Adrián Castro; and the Nueva Generacion party, led by Pedro Palacios. The council will be completed by two councilors from the alliance led by Paul Carrasco, Azuay Ya, which includes the official movement Creo -Reto-Centro Democrático and Pueblo Igualdad y Democracia.

With these results, the number of women on the council increases; there will be six in total. Only two seats were filled by women in the 2019 election.

Marcelo Cabrera’s Equality movement, which was the main local political force, was left out because it failed to register lists for councilors.

After knowing the results, the elected mayor, Cristian Zamora, called for unity in order to have governance in his administration.