He was the son of a traveling salesman and attended primary and secondary school in Tena before transferring at age 15 to a military college in Quito.
Although holding degrees in civil engineering, administration and physical education, he chose a career with the Ecuadorian army, where he rose to the rank of colonel before his involvement in a coup against the government.
In January 2000, thousands of Ecuadorians of Andean Indian descent massed in the capital of Quito to protest corruption in the government and economic policy.
Ordered to break up demonstrations, Gutierrez instead helped feed the protesters, allowed them to occupy the country's congress building, and joined Indian leader Antonio Vargas and a judge, Carlos Solorzano in "announcing a government of national salvation."
Indigenous and poor Ecuadorans staged massive protests when the Jamil Mahuad government decided to adopt the U.S. dollar as the national currency in 2000.
Gutiérrez disobeyed the government's order to repress the protestors and instead, together with fellow officers and their troops, joined the movement to depose president Mahuad.
Days later, the Ecuadoran Congress deposed the president and the vice-president took the presidential chair[2] Gutiérrez entered the national spotlight during the 2000 Ecuadorian coup d'état that unseated President Jamil Mahuad for three hours and forced him to abandon office after demonstrations in Quito by thousands of Indigenous Ecuadorians protested the Mahuad government's support of neoliberal economic policies, particularly the proposed dollarization plans.
[3] [4] Gutiérrez ran for President in 2002 as the candidate of the January 21 Patriotic Society Party (PSP), named for the date of the 2000 protest, and the Pachakutik Movement, on a platform of fighting corruption and reversing neoliberal economic reforms.
Gutiérrez was accused of embezzlement by the PSC for using funds, resources and public property in favor of PSP candidates in the elections of 2004, and by the Democratic Left (Ecuador) (Izquierda Democrática/ID), MPD and Pachakutik for jeopardizing the security of the state for literally inciting the people to burn the courts.
His adversaries sustained that the Constitution gives autonomy to the judicial branch and does not authorize Congress to interfere in the judiciary by removing or nominating judges.
[5] On 20 April 2005, following a week of massive demonstrations, the Congress of Ecuador (meeting in a special session in a private building, CIESPAL, with opposition delegates only), on the grounds that Gutiérrez had abandoned his constitutional duties, voted 60–2 (38 members, including the great majority of PRE/PRIAN/PSP deputies, did not vote) to remove Gutiérrez from office and appointed Vice President Alfedo Palacio González to serve as President.
At the same time, the Ecuadorian Joint Armed Forces Command (Comando Conjunto de las Fuerzas Armadas) publicly expressed that they were withdrawing their support for Gutiérrez, who had no option but to leave the Presidential Palace on a helicopter.
He was arrested at the Eloy Alfaro International Airport[8] in Manta, after arriving in a chartered SARPA plane with his brother, Gilmar Gutiérrez, his companion-in-arms Fausto Cobo, and some collaborators.
On 15 October 2006, his PSP, led by Gilmar Gutiérrez, got the third place in the national election with 17% of the total votes, with the support of the economically disadvantaged, landless farmers and indigenous population.
[11] A special commission formed by Correa in 2013 to investigate the events has claimed that he and his party plotted, along with the fugitive Isaias brothers (former owners of Filanbanco who reside in Miami after fleeing during the 1998–2000 banking crisis), former chief of intelligence Mario Pazmiño (accused by Correa of working with the CIA and of being involved in the Colombian attack against Ecuadorian territory in 2008 which killed FARC leader Raúl Reyes and sparked a regional crisis) as well as others.