Later he worked at Monte Albán, Mitla, La Quemada, Xochicalco, Isla de Sacrificios, Mexico City, and more work at Teotihuacan, including his flawed reconstruction of the Pyramid of the Sun.
According to Batres's autobiography, his mother, Francisca Huerta, encouraged his patriotism.
In the early 1880s, during the first years of the regime of former army general Porfirio Díaz, Batres went to Paris and studied archeology at the Museum of Natural History under Ernest Théodore Hamy and Armand de Quatrefages, but nothing is known about the nature of his training.
The marking of 110 archeological sites was superimposed on a map of Mexican railway lines.
One scholar views the map as highly symbolic, "The ruins of antiquity and train tracks of modernity act like joined metaphors, making reference to the past and present and conveying that Mexico is a nation both ancient and modern.