The Mexican Constitution has prohibited monopoly since its ratification in 1917. Historically, however, Mexican competition policy initiatives and practices began during the mid-1980s to procure the ending of central government control and protection of the national economy in an effort to develop, instead, a market-based economy. Among the initial activities conducted by the Mexican government was the adherence to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and as a result most compulsory import licences which existed until then were eliminated and official import prices were abolished. In addition, in 1994, Mexico entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the signing of which was followed by Mexico entering into free trade agreements with the European Union and other Latin American countries.

During the early 1990s the government also undertook important initiatives aiming at the privatisation of state-owned corporations; the largest of these being the sale of Telefonos de México, the telephone monopoly, which was followed by the privatisation of commercial banks, tv-broadcasting, satellites, airport and seaport facilities, as well as railway companies.

Given that some of the privatised sectors had natural monopoly characteristics, regulatory regimes were instituted to deal with defects in market operation. However, in some of the privatised industries regulatory schemes were either not sufficiently well conceived or not implemented in the end. In addition to this, it is worth noting that in non-public sectors, private companies often organised themselves into chambers, which more often than not ended up being utilised to fix prices (interestingly doing so with the consent of the government).