Celina Benitez was sworn in as the first Latina mayor of Mount Rainier on Monday night, adding to the growing diversity of the Route 1 corridor’s representatives.

A former council member, Benitez helped switch the city’s official newsletter to a bilingual format in 2017, among other efforts to make the city more welcoming to all residents. In 2019, she was named one of the greater D.C. area’s top Latina leaders by the nonprofit organization El Poder de Ser Mujer.

Born in El Salvador, Benitez moved to the U.S. as a young child, graduating from high school in California and earning a bachelor’s degree at Cal State University Long Beach. She moved to Mount Rainier in 2014 to be closer to family members who have long lived in the area.

She follows Brentwood Mayor Rocio Treminio-Lopez, another Salvadoran who made history in 2015 when she was elected the first Latina mayor in Maryland.

According to U.S. Census estimates from 2019, Mount Rainier is 43 percent Black, 34 percent Hispanic and 17 percent White. Another 4 percent are multiracial and 3 percent are Asian. Nearly a third of the city was born in another country.

The Route 1 corridor’s political leadership has become increasingly diverse in recent years, with Essence magazine highlighting four black women who served as mayors of North Brentwood, Edmonston, Colmar Manor and Bladensburg in 2018.

Interim Kevin Ward was recently elected as the first African-American man of Hyattsville after Candace Hollingsworth who stepped down serving as Hyattsville’s first African-American mayor and the city’s youngest elected to the position, while College Park’s Patrick Wojahn was sworn in 2015 as its first openly LGBTQ mayor.

Benitez replaces Malinda Miles who served as mayor of Mount Rainier for 16 years and who was the longest serving mayor in the city’s history. She was also the first Black woman elected to city council.

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