The dominant narrative situates the end of the prosperity of Ilhéus (Bahia, Brazil) in the 1990’s when the vassoura-de-bruxa (witch’s broom plague), a parasite-induced disease, decimated cocoa plantations and ended the reign of the coronéis. This caste of landowners had built or consolidated fortunes on the exploitation of land, resources, and people through colonial and postcolonial Brazil (Rosa, 2001). Nowadays, the Brazilian cocoa sector has reached a new momentum, focused on sustainable development, social inclusion, and gourmet chocolate. But as a globalized commodity, cocoa – and subsequently, chocolate – emerged from the violence of the plantation as a colonial system of production (Mintz, 1986) and of a process of rapid and indeterminate cultural encounter, which philosopher Édouard Glissant calls the Relation (1990). In their wake (Sharpe, 2016), the vassoura-de-bruxa episode is another one of brutal collapse, loss of livelihood, and dismantling of the socioeconomic infrastructures of the region, mostly based on monoculture. Another narrative – stemming mostly from descendants of rural workers of the late XXth century – highlights how the abandonment of cocoa plantations by their own landlords opened for possibilities. Most notably, it allowed former rural employees and displaced urban workers to access land ownership. In Brazil, where land concentration has historically kept power in the hands of a few and left most rural workers landless, cocoa in Southern Bahia offers a notable counterpoint. This presentation considers the disruptive power of the plague and its entanglements within the region. It thus bridges environmental and historical anthropology to demonstrate how oral histories (from those who have lived this episode) nuance the dominant narrative of the cocoa downfall (embraced by a part of the renewed cocoa sector to build a national project) and showcase an abrupt incursion of contamination within the colonial order of plantations (Tsing et al., 2019; Jobson, 2020).