He was among twelve Jewish slave trading partners and others, handed out the strongest punishment possible for their alleged involvement and was burned alive at the stake as part of an auto-da-fé in 1639.
[3] The Portuguese-born involved in the Atlantic slave trade conducted their business as individual private traders, rather than as part of state-owned joint-stock companies.
[3] From 1595 until 1640, the Portuguese-born held the Asiento de Negros, a kind of monopoly contract to export African slaves to the colonies in Spanish Empire.
The Portuguese had long established their influence in West Africa through trade and so the Spanish found it useful to simply lease out the rights to them instead of directly getting involved themselves.
Significant figures such as asiento holders such as António Fernandes de Elvas and Manuel Rodrigues Lamego were also of Cristão-Novo converso or Marrano Jewish ancestry, like the Perez brothers and were able to enrich themselves greatly by their involvement in the trade of enslaved African people.
[8][7] Perez, "one of the world's most powerful men in international commerce"[9] and nearly one hundred fellow "New Christians" were arrested by the Peruvian Inquisition in Lima on 11 August 1635,[9] accused of being a party to what is called the complicidad grande, or "Great Jewish Conspiracy" to commit heresy and treason.
[10] The specific charge levied by Inquisitor of Lima, Antonio de Castro y Castillo, was that the group were Judaizers, who pretended to society that they were faithful Catholics, but secretly, in private continued to practice their ancestral religion of Rabbinic Judaism.
The crackdown on these Portuguese-born accused Crypto-Jews by the Inquisition involved 63 Jews[14] who were given various punishments, such as public flogging, humiliation and exile, while Perez was one of twelve sentenced to death by being burned alive at the stake in the largest auto-da-fé in history.