Sixto Alfonso Durán-Ballén Cordovez (14 July 1921 – 15 November 2016) was an Ecuadorian political figure and architect. He served as Mayor of Quito between 1970 and 1978. In 1951, he co-founded a political party, the Social Christian Party. In 1991, he left the Social Christian Party and formed a new conservative group, the Republican Union Party (PUR), before running for president for the third time in 1992. Durán-Ballén was elected as President of Ecuador in 1992. He served as congressman in 1984 and again in 1998. he helped to modernize the Ecuadorian economy while facing challenges from the World Bank and oversaw and resolved the Cenepa War during the last years of his presidency. He received positive ratings, upon leaving office four years later on 10 August 1996. His presidency was seen favorably by the public polls, but received mixed opinions from scholars. Early life Durán-Ballén was born on 14 July 1921, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born while his parents, Sixto Durán-Ballén Romero and Maria Eugenia Cordovéz y Cayzedo, were on a diplomatic mission in the United States. Ballén studied at San Jose La Salle grammar schools in Guayaquil and in Quito. His secondary schooling was with the Jesuits at San Gabriel high school. Durán-Ballén studied architecture at Columbia University, where he graduated first in his class in 1945. He married Josefina Villalobos in New York in 1945. Early political career Durán-Ballén was one of the founders of the Social Christian Party (PSC) together with Camilo Ponce Enríquez in 1955. Under the presidency of Camilo Ponce Enríquez, he served as minister of public works from 1956 to 1960. Went on to Washington DC where was named Deputy Director of Projects Analysis, at the beginnings of the Inter-American Development Bank. Returning in 1968 to his private practice of Architecture, ran for Mayor and was elected Mayor of Quito in 1970 and re-elected in 1974. In 1979 he ran as the PSC's presidential candidate, but was defeated by the populist Jaime Roldós Aguilera. In 1984, President Leon Febres-Cordero, appointed Durán-Ballén Minister of Housing, position he held until 1988 when the Social Christian Party chose him to run again for president. However "his heart was not in it" as his youngest daughter of his nine children was going through the rigors of bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy because of leukemia. She died in 1989 at the age of 29. Presidency (1992–1996)