Gustavo Adolfo Cárdenas Gutiérrez (born 25 January 1958) is a Mexican businessman and politician affiliated with Movimiento Ciudadano (formerly from the National Action Party).

[1] Cárdenas got his first job in operations at XEEW radio in Matamoros and worked at the El Bernal shredding plant in González as he pursued a degree in business administration from the Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas.

[1] He also became the director general of a hotel in Ciudad Victoria and of Cerámica Santa Mónica, S.A. de C.V. His business career continued to be diverse as the 1980s continued: he sat on the Mexican Association of Hotels and Motels, ran a gas station, and served on the Tamaulipas Chamber of Commerce and state chapter of Canacintra [es] (Chamber of Industry).

This first public office propelled his political career; he was a local deputy to the LVI Legislature of the Congress of Tamaulipas between 1996 and 1998 and was the PAN's gubernatorial candidate in 1998 and 2004.

[1] On February 23, 2016, Cárdenas took leave from the Chamber of Deputies in order to pursue his third bid for Governor of Tamaulipas, being temporarily replaced in the legislature by his alternate, Daniel Adrián Sosa Carpio; the MC bid came in a distant third to the PRI and PAN candidacies, pulling in 5.8 percent of the vote.