Who is Federico Gutiérrez, new Mayor of Medellín?
Federico Gutiérrez was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1974. He is a civil engineer from the University of Medellín and a specialist in Senior Management and Political Sciences. He is the son of Hernán Gutiérrez Isaza, a civil engineer at the National University, and Amparo Zuluaga Gómez, an architect at the Institute of Arts who died in 2015.
In 2016, he married Margarita Gómez Marín, an administrative engineer at the Antioquia School of Engineering and a marketing specialist at EAFIT University, with whom he had two children: Emilio and Pedro.
His steps in politics
His first steps in politics began when he was just a young university student where he always showed character and interest in politics, joining the Municipal Youth Council in 1999 where he would end up serving as Territorial Planning Councilor a year later.
This approach would later lead him to be part of the analysis and socialization team of the Development Plan of the City of Medellín.
It was in 2003 when Gutiérrez decided to run for the Medellín Council, a position in which he rose little by little.
In 2008 he obtained an award from the Junior Chamber of Colombia where he was awarded the Young Junior Executive recognition in Antioquia, and in 2009 he received the Outstanding Young Person of the year award in the category of political, legal and governmental affairs.
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In 2006 he became Mayor of Medellín for the first time, a position he held until 2019. He was the first candidate to occupy this important position after presenting his candidacy through signatures and not with the support of a traditional party. In fact, at that time he faced the candidate of the Democratic Center, Juan Carlos Vélez, whom he beat.
He was also chosen at that time as the ‘Best Mayor’ (2009), awarded by the Play and Childhood Corporation and the Presidency of the Republic.
At the end of his first term as mayor of the city he ended with an approval rating of 79%, a significant percentage that boosted his career so that in 2022 he decided to run for the Presidency of Colombia, facing Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernández.
His return to the Mayor’s Office of Medellín
After his defeat in the presidential elections, ‘Fico’ Gutiérrez He decided to run for mayor of the capital of Antioquia where he faced several candidates, including Juan Carlo Upegui, whom he had a great advantage at the polls.
In this way, with more than 640,310 votes, Federico Gutiérrez returns to the Mayor’s Office of Medellín.