PIONEERING Basques and the members of the local principalia helped develop Pampanga into a sugar-producing area, one of the sugar pioneers. At the peak of the sugar industry, which were the late 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s, the province had two sugar mills and the sugar barons controlled the local economy — and its politics. The 10 wealthiest families either owned the sugar plantations or had stakes in the sugar mills.