Along with famous Costa Rican writers Fabián Dobles, Yolanda Oreamuno, Carlos Luis Fallas, and Carmen Lyra, Gutiérrez was considered a member of "the '40s Generation." All members of the communist left, these writers espoused political ideology in their writing. Most of these writers focused on social problems, such as land distribution, multinationals, and social reforms, as did Gutiérrez. Many of the writers were active military and political participants in the Costa Rican Civil War, although Gutiérrez was in the United States and Chile at the time. He became a close friend of poet Pablo Neruda, who would write an introduction to Gutiérrez's 1968 book, "La hoja de aire".