Gutiérrez Castañeda, a lawyer from the Our Lady of the Rosary University, was first elected in 1988 as Mayor of the Municipality of Agua de Dios, Cundinamarca, representing the political movement Colombia Always, a movement created within the Colombian Liberal Party. After finalizing her term in 1990 Gutiérrez Castañeda was appointed Regional Director of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare in 1991. She later returned to the political arena when she supported Leonor Serrano for the Governorship of Cundinamarca in 1994. When Serrano was elected she appointed Gutiérrez Castañeda as Secretary of Environment in January 1995, and a year later as Secretary General.
Representative
In 1997, she resigned from Serrano's administration to postulate herself for the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia for the legislative elections of 1998. After a long deliberation process following the corruption scandal that resulted in the resignation of the President of the Chamber of Representatives, Armando Pomárico, Gutiérrez Castañeda was elected by the liberal majority coalition to finish Pomárico's term as President of the Chamber of the Representatives of Colombia, and became on March 30, 2000 the first woman to ever serve as President of the Chamber in the history of Colombia. Although her short presidency ended on July 20, 2000, she terminated the programs her predecessor was accused of, like foreign trips, gasoline allowances for the transportation of congress members, and the payroll discrepancies that so infuriated the public. In 2002 Gutiérrez Castañeda was re-elected representing the Colombia Always movement supporting once again Leonor Serrano who ran for a seat in the Senate. In 2004 Colombia Always left the Liberal coalition and joined the ranks of the Radical Change. As a Representative, she was a member of the First Constitutional Commission, the Special Commission on Territorial Division, the Commission on Peace, and the Special Commission on Modernization.
Senator
For the legislative elections of 2006 Gutiérrez Castañeda was elected as Senator of Colombia in representation of Radical Change. Radical Change had made a pact with the coalition of supporters of President Álvaro Uribe, giving the party the chance to preside the Senate. After an election in Congress against senators Rubén Darío Quintero, Arturo Char, and Miguel Pinedo, Gutiérrez Castañeda was elected President of the Senate of Colombia for the period that began on July 20, 2007.
Controversies
On April 18, 2008, the Supreme Court of Colombia ordered a preliminary investigation against Senator Gutiérrez while she was President of Congress for her apparent relation to armed right rebel groups in the Colombian parapolitics scandal that shook the country, and led to the incarceration of various congressmen. The investigations connected Gutierrez with alias "El Pájaro", paramilitary of Cundinamarca, from where she is from Gutiérrez has denied the allegations and any relation with the rebels, citing her investigation as a plot against her. On 17 October 2011 the Office of the Inspector General of Colombia officially dropped the case against Congresswoman Gutiérrez.
