António Fernandes de Elvas (died 1623) was a Portuguese-born merchant, including investor in pepper tax farm and Asian spices.
[1] Fernandes de Elvas and his family were Marranos;[2] that is to say Sephardic Jews who conformed outwardly as Cristão-Novo due to the demands of the Portuguese Crown but privately continued to adhere to Judaism.
António Fernandes de Elvas was born in the Kingdom of Portugal to a Sephardic Jewish converso family, who had outwardly conformed to the Catholic Church to avoid being expelled from the country, but continued to practice Judaism in private.
[4] Following the Portuguese Succession War, the Iberian Union (1580–1640) was formed whereby the Habsburg Spanish Empire took control of Portugal (which had previously been an independent kingdom under the House of Aviz).
Marrano slave-trading families other than Fernandes de Elvas that formed part of this international network were: Rodrigues, Jiménez, Noronha, Mendes, Pallos Dias, Caballero, Jorge and Caldeira.