He was born to Lucia Amoretti and Bernardo Debenedetti, a soft drink manufacturer, in the southern
Buenos Aires suburb of
Avellaneda, in Argentina's
Buenos Aires Province. Debenedetti attended secondary school at the San José Academy, and enrolled at the
University of Buenos Aires School of Letters, where he became a protégé of Professor
Juan Bautista Ambrosetti. Elected president of the student body in 1902, Debenedetti persuaded the school's regents to adopt a Student's Day. He later earned a
Doctor of Philosophy and Letters in 1909, as succeeded his mentor as both curator of the
Pucará de Tilcara ruins, and of the university's
Museum of Ethnography. He was invited to join the
International Congress of Americanists, as Ambrosetti had been, during the group's 1929 symposium in
Paris. Upon his death in 1930, his ashes were buried alongside Ambrosetti's at the foot of the Tilcara ruins. ==References==