On Mexican Monopolies

Last month's Este País had a long look at monopolies and oligopolies in Mexico as well as proposals to foster more competition. The essays run the gamut from perceptive to unintelligible, but this paragraph from Carlos Elizondo Mayer-Serra struck me as a wise diagnosis of the business ills specific to Mexico:

The only desirable monopoly is one that comes from an invention or technological innovation. A patent, as Article 28 of the constitution recognizes, is a temporary monopoly that is permitted because it stimulates creativity. The most prominent businesses in the United States are typically associated with an invention, from the Ford Model T to Microsoft to the Kindle. In Mexico, they tend to be associated with a business dominant because of its huge size or control of a network, not because it invented something.